Family Jewels
2018, single-channel video, colour, sound (English), 7:11
made in collaboration with Eleonora Edreva
made in collaboration with Eleonora Edreva
Family Jewels is a magnification of genderless beings in the world and in our home. It is an attempt to family-build through tenderly nourishing these lifeforms just as they build up and nourish us. The work is a response to “biological” arguments for the existence of the gender binary and of sexual reproduction as family building requirements - as a couple who exists outside of those ideas, we (Leo and Eleonora) seek to show, celebrate, and cradle life forms that wriggle out of boxed-in conceptions of gender and reproduction.
Fermentation became a parenting practice for us; caring for these creatures calls for love, regularity, and careful observation. Maintaining healthy ferments is daily work and we have different relationships and responsibilities with each one of our jars - watching our kefir grains grow with each new batch, saving a little bit of kvass to make the next batch ferment quicker - even different jars of the same type of ferment behave differently and reveal their personalities to us little by little.
Parenting is essentially just an investment in the future and ferments are the future we're invested in, a future of embracing and caring for the microscopic organisms that make up our bodies and our world and folding them tenderly into our concepts of family.
Want to watch? Link to video here.
In 2019, Family Jewels selected for a seven person show curated by Lauren Fournier. Images and information from the showing at Access Gallery in Vancouver available here.