Thirst Trap celebrates fragility and temporality. A monument for the ambiguity and porousness of bodies, it suggests lingering in the in-between states of mourning, where staying with the discomfort of the loss of a familiar order has the potential for metamorphosis,  perhaps into kinder structures. While the timelessness of sand as a sculptural medium evokes antiquity, as an agent of natural erosion it equally foretells the return of these edifices to the earth. These sand sculptures together create a site that questions notions of singularity  and points to a contemporary form of loneliness—we are hyper connected, yet alone or separated. In their materiality and logic, the sculptures challenge notions of permanence and human superiority, instead suggesting an emphasis on the fragility of bodies and their codependency on each other and the environment. Potential for cross-contamination resides in their porous makeup. As the illusion of solid, discrete form dissolves into granular interspersion, so too do  notions of inside and out, self and other, body and architecture, creating a hybrid substance, a post-binary entity. Provoked by this material disquiet, precarious conditions of desire and transgression emerge: a glory hole carved into a stately wall, a depleted fountain armored with plastic cover—at once a kind of winking modesty and flimsy prophylaxis—and a mourner with a shower head that offers some shelter. In Thirst Trap, one’s expectation of moisture is  subverted and instead made witness to a parched subjectivity that both pleads for and shies away from a corrosive wetness. 

Courtesy of the artist and Edel Assanti and Commonwealth and Council