Openwork, performed March 1, 2026 at Automata, Los Angeles.
Witchcraft—like the violence it opposes—works by repetition, by the looping and looping and looping of a thread, by the network of words. ~So Mayer, Spells, 21st Century Occult Poetry
Named for a decorative process that creates holes, ruptures, or gaps, my performance Openwork is a private ritual and visual loop made in the form of a spell work. Openwork borrows imagery from the humananimals of women’s Surrealism and my familial roots in handiwork and folk magic. The performance grows from my project The Seers, a work comprising one hundred collage drawings created with images sourced from historic books at Internet Archive. Imagery is inspired by the work of Hélène Cixous and Carolee Schneemann around their interest in the creative process, and mysticism often centered in the figure of the cat.
Photography by Charles Benoit
