image: KT Pe Benito, 2022
vivarium: “an enclosure, container, or structure adapted or prepared for keeping animals under seminatural conditions for observation or study or as pets.” From Latin vivere, to live, and Latin suffix -arium, a place relating to or connected with. A place for life.
developed through The Trophallaxis Study Group, jah elyse sayers’ installation “vivarium, suspended” calls on multi-year interspecies study and hangs in the balance between solitude and sociality, presence and trace, demolition and possibility, precarity and support.
what follows are snapshots from the making of vivarium, suspended:
for months, i visited this honeysuckle every time i walked my dogs, watching it grow toward the same unmoving parked car, watching it reach and wrap around tires, watching it climb and grasp handle. felt like a threat to break in. an offer to enter. the day after the vine took hold of the handle, someone cut it down. as if they had felt the threat. the car remains unmoved. honeysuckle remains rooted, ready.
Carolina mantis ootheca (egg case), found on an october walk as temperatures drop and days grow shorter. if it hatches, it will be in the spring, after a period called diapause: a halt in development during cold months. diapause: a technology of suspension.
mantises are sit-and-wait predators. this means that when you notice a mantis in a safe location and with access to food, you may find them there (or very close) the next day and the next day and the next day after that. for a couple weeks, a bright green Carolina mantis made home at the top of a lambs quarter plant growing on my porch. i visited her often. then one morning, i went out to the porch, and she was gone. i checked the nearby plants and railings; no luck. i looked around and realized that my porch needed sweeping. gliding the broom across the floor, i noticed a set of disembodied spotted lanternfly wings. i looked up to see a different mantis, this one gray-brown, directly above my head. one way to find a mantis is to search for what it leaves behind.
many of the bricks and all of the copper pipes in vivarium, suspended come from the site of a housing renovation i have worked on since last spring with Housing Reparations Philly’s Water Pod Home Build: a crew of Black and Brown trans and non-binary workers learning from one another in action and in practice to renovate the home of a loved one. here, Eli’s foot dangles through the dining room floor, the basement ceiling. a beloved and i mortar loose bricks steady while Eli tends to rough carpentry above us, held by temporary wall: the floor revealed as suspension, as porous. the grounds of our gathering nourish our skill-building, home-building, community-building.
Vox Populi installation, 2022
“vivarium, suspended” was activated as a gallery installation at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA) and activation of artist-research group Trophallaxis Study Group, made up of Jonathan Gonzalez (curator), Marguerite Angelica Monique Hemmings, Winter Rae Schneider, and jah elyse sayers. taking its cues from insects’ parasocial behaviors of nutrient exchange, the Trophallaxis Study Group fostered collaboration and exchange among its members and visitor-participants. “vivarium, suspended” consisted of a four-wall mural painted by sayers, multiple sculptures, and participatory prompts (prompts developed in collaboration with Ica Sadagat).
pictured: “slow jab.” 2022. used screen printing frame (wood, polyester, emulsion), wood, leather, found cut-out of tree limb growing through chain link fence.
Jazz percussionist, herbalist, researcher, sculptor, martial artist, and teacher Milfod Graves developed the martial arts practice Yara in part by “hanging out” with praying mantises hatched in his Jamaica, Queens, backyard. source image: still from Jake Meginsky and Neil Cloaca Young (2018), Full Mantis (film); originally: c.1969. Scan from Graves’ personal archive. Milford Graves, Askia Muhammed Touŕe, Maruin X, The Last Poets, Abdullah Ali Rahmam, Rashid Ail, Maxine Rayson, 5/31/69
[photo by KT Pe Benito]
pictured: close-up of “suspense.” 2022. found wood frame, preserved mantis mismolt, chinese & carolina mantis oothecae, copper, mesh fabric, chain, coconut coir, wild lambs quarter, ghost mantises, feeder insects
[photo by KT Pe Benito]
pictured: close-up of “-mantic.” 2022. found mirror & frame, found copper, lanternfly wings & exoskeletons, found brick, mesh.
[photo by KT Pe Benito]
