Composing A Bath
I categorized a lifetime of physical and mental scars accumulated on my body and memory by assigning each to one of 70-plus different handmade soaps; a chart map screenprinted onto a cotton towel describes each event, body part, or scar. Assembled in a print composer's drawer meant for storing type, the soaps suggest that I could recompose my personal story, my very being, by choosing which past events and their effects to scrub away using the assigned soap, which to clean up and show off, which will never be cleansed of shame, which are treasured, which I'm fond of.
It's a self-portrait, a diary, an identity card, a testimony of how I'm different from my identical twin, an intimate body map, and a factual assertion that the past is fixed, not fluid. The myth that one can reinvent their own life story by washing away parts of the past is common wishful thinking, a dream suitable only for stolen solitude in a bathtub, and as ephemeral as soap bubbles.