Latrines
2025
Installation
Kombucha leather, compost, steel, light, suspension cables.
(4) 20 x 20 x 17 in (seats)., 38 x 40 x 40 in. (light sculpture)
2025
Installation
Kombucha leather, compost, steel, light, suspension cables.
(4) 20 x 20 x 17 in (seats)., 38 x 40 x 40 in. (light sculpture)
Latrines refers to the communal toilets of ancient Rome, used for defecation and often for socializing. Without stalls or partitions, these spaces embodied a social dimension that has been left in Rome’s past. In the installation Latrines, four steel seats, similar in size to conventional toilet seats, are modified into dry toilets and padded with kombucha leather. The use of dry toilets, interrupt the conventional journey of waste and make visible the infrastructures and processes that normally remain out of our sight. Interacting with the seats, visitors encounter layers of collective experiences originally lived out in Roman latrines.
At the center of the installation, a suspended cylindrical steel sculpture descends from the ceiling. It evokes pipe drains used for the discharge of wastewater, stormwater, or treated effluent into a river. Inside it is a lamp; at the bottom, a kombucha leather membrane filters the light, casting a warm, orange glow over the surfaces below. In this way, the work reorders the usual path of sewage, making the audience its final destination and symbolically bathing them in our digestive juices.
In Latrines, I examine how sewage and waste-treatment systems shape our relationship with the natural processes of the body and ecosystems, while also exposing the cultural repulsion associated with waste. By bringing the audience closer to what these systems seek to keep at a distance, the installation questions the idea of disposal and reveals the continuity between bodies, their waste, and the environments that sustain them.
.
At the center of the installation, a suspended cylindrical steel sculpture descends from the ceiling. It evokes pipe drains used for the discharge of wastewater, stormwater, or treated effluent into a river. Inside it is a lamp; at the bottom, a kombucha leather membrane filters the light, casting a warm, orange glow over the surfaces below. In this way, the work reorders the usual path of sewage, making the audience its final destination and symbolically bathing them in our digestive juices.
In Latrines, I examine how sewage and waste-treatment systems shape our relationship with the natural processes of the body and ecosystems, while also exposing the cultural repulsion associated with waste. By bringing the audience closer to what these systems seek to keep at a distance, the installation questions the idea of disposal and reveals the continuity between bodies, their waste, and the environments that sustain them.