The Island & The Grotto



The Island-esque and the Grotto-esque: edible autopoiesis and metamorphosis for Robida Collective in 2022 for their Island Issue. The piece included a text and a companion installation installed in my garden, a small space between two other buildings left vacant after the building was burnt down in the ‘90s in an act of arson. The long skinny garden sits on top of whatever is left of that older building. Within one of the small sections of pavers, between a few dormant beds as it is late winter/early spring, I arranged a collection (system, archipelago, etc) of small works generated from an interest in the autopoietic and the complication of that cosmogenic myth with industrial, natural, and living material. The works include casein plastic impressions of my palm and fingers, sprouting potatoes on clay pedestals, durum wheat bread mottled with holes, impressions, and tears, fruit (mostly citrus) preserved, fermenting, and rotting in coats of beeswax, and the empty beeswax shells from that process overflowing with pools of water set with agar. Visitors included flies, two mourning doves, and several slugs.

The journal is available to purchase and a pdf of the text is available upon request (send a note to adriggallo@gmail.com).






Mark