Mineral attachments

This project traces the path of a mineral attachment – Mercury’s ride into the human body and the journey’s unwitting participants.

Man-made cargo ships transport ‘invasive’ fish species onto unfamiliar waters, and through the process of bio-magnification, the human body comes a site for mercury poisoning when sport fish are consumed. This cyclical journey of mercury entering the ecological sphere due to human action, and ultimately back into the human body centers the acute porosity of the body to the ecological world it inhabits. Presented as a found object paired with videos of the Round Goby falling from the stomach of a ship to the stomach of the human body, this installation occupies the hybrid-reality where the body is rendered as a mere vessel for mineral transport and accumulation.