WATER DISCIPLINE

Water Discipline (2016) documents the artist’s practice of walking through Oakland while carrying a stone in her mouth. The practice draws upon the folklore of wilderness survival, which counsels that sucking on a rock may quench one's thirst, and deliver one through a landscape of deprivation. Early desert ascetics also carried pebbles in their mouths as an imposition of silence- learning the stillness and selflessness of stone. Water Discipline is a restorative ritual following years of intense community activism, allowing the artist to step back the wake of failure and frustration, and simply bear witness in an exercise of humility.