ROMANCE
gut flora (off-site at april april, New York)
Lizette Hernández
Rebecca R Peel
Sarah M. Rodriguez
Micah Schippa
Michelle 진아 Song
Jan 7–Feb 28, 2024
With the right breathing exercises and hip openers, the gut can be activated, spewing spirals of memories you didn’t know you had. In that soup of acid, neurotransmitters, and microorganisms, one might gain access to generational memory, and cosmic knowledge, too—an elixir of psychedelic dreams, psychosis, past dimensions, and entangled interspecies being. Hot tears and visions vomit from the gut trying to recoup something in these viscous fluids. When the gut gets activated, cradling higher consciousness, lower consciousness, and divine energy, all at once, are we dying, or healing?
Urban development leading to the loss of local habitats and biodiversity may be detrimental to human health by depleting or otherwise altering the reservoirs of environmental microbes. Members of the microbiota can be permanent ‘residents,’ transmitted through close contact between individuals, or transient ‘hitchhikers’ from ingested food, water, and various components of the environment.
The earth is a brain is a body.
Gut flora can affect how we experience the world, triggering intense feelings of happiness, reward, or anxiety and depression, in turn impacting behavior and health. People have co-evolved with environmental bacteria adapted over eons to being at home in human bodies...
...shaping a topography of psychological and emotional experience—why ourselves and our homes are unwell, what is subsequently culturally determined, how a soul evolves. How does the body grieve and flourish in conditions inhospitable to the creatures we need growing within us.
Epidemiological studies show individuals living in built environments have lower diversity of microbiota. Most of the body's serotonin comes from the gut wall. Any disturbance to the gut microbiomes is supposed to be associated with neuropsychiatric disorders, metabolic disorders, autoimmune diseases and allergies, etc. Poor health-effects may be caused by changes in the human lifestyle, diet, living environment, and environmental biodiversity as a result of urbanization. It follows that manipulation of the flora and living conditions represents a promising therapeutic strategy. Studies show that growing up in microbe-rich environments, such as traditional farms, can have protective health effects, both mental and physiological.
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Installation view, Micah Schippa and Rebecca R Peel. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Rebecca R Peel
sorcery/forgery i, 2023
Reclaimed walnut, red oak, glass thermometer
10 x 4 x 1 in.
Photo: Frankie Tyska
Rebecca R Peel
sorcery/forgery i, 2023
Reclaimed walnut, red oak, glass thermometer
10 x 4 x 1 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Rebecca R. Peel
sorcery/forgery i, 2023
Reclaimed walnut, red oak, glass thermometer
10 x 4 x 1 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Rebecca R Peel
sorcery/forgery ii, 2023
Reclaimed walnut, red oak, glass thermometer
10 x 4 x 1 in.
Photo: Frankie Tyska
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Rebecca R Peel
sorcery/forgery ii, 2023
Reclaimed walnut, red oak, glass thermometer
10 x 4 x 1 in.
Photo: Frankie Tyska
Rebecca R Peel
sorcery/forgery ii, 2023
Reclaimed walnut, red oak, glass thermometer
10 x 4 x 1 in.
Photo: Frankie Tyska
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Sarah Rodriguez
Cow, 2023
Cast glass, cast, carved, and welded aluminum
24 x 12 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Sarah Rodriguez
Cow, 2023
Cast glass, cast, carved, and welded aluminum
24 x 12 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Sarah Rodriguez
Cow, 2023
Cast glass, cast, carved, and welded aluminum
24 x 12 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Micah Schippa
The last sentence ever written, 2024
Brass clock movement mechanism in gastric solution
15 x 15 in.
Photo: Frankie Tyska
Micah Schippa
The last sentence ever written, 2024
Brass clock movement mechanism in gastric solution
15 x 15 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska.
Michelle 진아 Song
Nighttime at the creek, 2023
Oil on linen
20 x 24 in.
Photo: Frankie Tyska
Michelle 진아 Song
Nighttime at the creek, 2023
oil on linen
20 x 24 in.
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Installation view, Lizette Hernández. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Installation view, Lizette Hernández. Photo: Frankie Tyska
Lizette Hernández
Transferencia, 2023
Raku fired earthenware
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Lizette Hernández
Claveles, 2023
Raku on earthenware
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Lizette Hernández
Caricias, 2023
Raku on earthenware
Photo: JSP Art Photography
Installation view. Photo: Frankie Tyska