Visual Arts

Xenophoria is a new single channel video. As opposed to the more well-known term ‘xenophobia’, Xenophoria refers to a love of the foreign and is inspired by the name of a mysterious species of aquatic carrier shell, Xenophora pallidae. This shell calcifies objects in the seabed to its spine, liberally incorporating foreign bodies into its own structure. Likewise, Xenophoria stages a delirious search for the melanin pigment — the molecule responsible for skin color — as it manifests variously in both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic bodies. Referencing the aesthetics of both microscopic imagery and ASMR videos, the work depicts such actions as dissecting squids and bursting their ink sacs, tracing the discolored tumours within Lam Qua’s medical paintings, harvesting funghi, and locating bodily moles, in an absurdist investigation of the substance of racial othering.