Wash
The installation entitled Wash features a collection of specially crafted large soap bars etched with racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual slurs or epithets that offer participants the opportunity to eliminate or wash away words that vilify "the other". Participants are invited to select a bar of soap from a wall of carefully arrayed ceramic soap dishes and to wash their hands with it, letting the ink flow from the letters and mix with the white suds and lather. The work explores what it is to be the object of ethnic, religious, sexist or homophobic insults, asking what it might take to cleanse disdainful speech from the collective consciousness.
handmade soap, ceramic dish, metal, ink
35' x 6' x 1' installation
Wash Installation
Proposal
Linguists Essays on Wash
Notes on Doug Beube's Wash by Michael Adams
A Semantic Description of Slurs by Cecelia Cutler
Slurs, Denial, and Subtleness by Hiram Smith
Performance Arcade 2020 - February 26 - March 1
Participant Washing Soap
Wash Definitions List
