portable spills

Collaboration with photographer Magali Charron, 2023

Portable spills is a series of flexible, movable, permanent silicone spill sculptures completed during an Artist Residency in Motherhood. Working with the concept of domestic labour as a site of disappearance, these soft sculptures playfully subvert the Sisyphean task of making the messy disappear. Like many new parents, I spend a significant part of each day cleaning up a rainbow of spills from all kinds of silicone baby objects—bibs, bowls, spoons, teethers, cups, toys, soothers. In an inversion of material, these silicone spills are permanent, and can be stacked, draped, folded, wrapped, stretched, and of course, washed. It’s a spill that won’t disappear and can come with you wherever you go; a spill that acts as some stubborn evidence for the invisible embodied labour of cleaning up.

Silicone, pigments, household objects. Dimensions variable

This project was made possible through generous assistance from ArtsNB and the Canada Council for the Arts.