Sappho’s Lagoon, 2021
Holographic films on glass and plaster picture frames

Using animals from Kólpos Kallonís lagoon in Lesbos, Greece that informed Aristotle’s theories on metaphysics and genetics (including eels, dolphins, cuttlefish, etc.) I am examining overlaps between biology and intimacy. Lesbos also being the birthplace of the poet Sappho, these animals are charged with homoeroticism, romanticism, and intimacy. Although referencing historically lesbian material, this work lives outside an explicitly lesbian framework. Rather, I am investigating the erasure of Sappho’s writing as an entrance into a larger discourse on the erasure of queer, unconventional intimacy. Renaming Kallonís, also known as Aristotle’s Lagoon, acts as a tribute and reclamation. I am presenting holographic images of these animals within picture frames, similar to framing images of loved ones. In doing so, I am reinterpreting the conventionality of picture frames while also conceptually reframing these animals and their habitat in a Posthumanist lens. Seeing holograms as artifacts implying an absence of objects, these holograms become memorializations and/or adorned relics (not so dissimilar from a museum’s collection of fossils). This also lends itself to Aristotle’s ecocentric philosophy that, similar to humans, all animals and plants have souls. In this way, this work encourages reframing biology and natural history to include queerness and intimacy.