coming soon
I dedicated much of 2023 and part of 2024 to thinking about cuttlefish, an alien-looking cephalopod that inhabit most of the world’s oceans but are notably absent from the waters near North America. What captivates me most about cuttlefish is their mesmerizing color-changing bodies. Their skin comprises three layers of platelets, enabling them to manually select necessary colors and automatically reflect hues from their surroundings to either camouflage or stand out, depending on the circumstances. Additionally, I am intrigued by their evolutionary success, despite retaining their cuttlebone. In contrast to other cephalopods such as octopus and squid, which abandoned shells long ago to maneuver through tight spaces, cuttlefish possess a hard cuttlebone beneath their skin. While the cuttlebone’s purpose isn’t necessarily protective, it’s shape and placement in the cuttlefish body is reminiscent of an internal shell that signals a rigid fortification meant to shield some sort of crucial softness.
In this age of overwhelming and inescapable 24-hour news cycles, where the constant inundation of information necessitates swift and careful reflection, I found myself turning to the cuttlefish for insight. This body of work casts cuttlefish as a type of aquatic Atlas— shouldering an ancient artistic burden that asks its bearers to reflect their surroundings for public consumption while simultaneously carrying the weight of that which is reflected.
I’ve channeled my cuttlefish obsession into two separate, but interwoven avenues. The first is an experimental essay that combines autoethnographic prose, poetry and science writing for Black Flash’s upcoming spring issue, Surface. The essay uses the cuttlefish's colour and texture changing skin and the evolution of the cuttlebone as a thematic framework through which to contemplate how and why we create art in the current cultural and political moment. The second is an installation of abstract forms and found object assemblages that take inspiration from the cuttlefish body and natural abilities. The installation also repurposes some of the poems in the essay, linking the two versions of the project and positioning the writing as a field guide for navigating the installation.
In progress
Pubic Mice is a body of sculpture work about the shape of ruins and the aesthetics of what’s left. Soft yet unsettling, Pubic Mice is a fear-driven inquiry into material destruction not only breaching the threshold of the home, but of the pants as well. Using familiar, found, dirty and broken materials, contrasted with adornments and toys, Pubic Mice considers the act of crumbling as the climax of each item’s life cycle that happens prior to an as-yet-unknown resolution.
“Going up the down escalator (looking for a neutral path) is the culmination of the artist’s long-suffering pursuit of body neutrality. Forever fretting over what to consume and what to expel (both physically and artistically), intestines eventually became Prousky’s muse. In a pair of performances for the CAFKA biennial, she will parade through public spaces in downtown Kitchener-Waterloo, dressed as a sexy intestine. Strutting confidently along King Street, as it seamlessly blends from King Street East, to West, to South, to North, starting in Kitchener and crossing over into Waterloo, Prousky will be followed by a paparazzi-style photographer. She will eventually arrive at Ethel’s Lounge, whereupon and when-upon you are cordially invited to join her for a burger and a beer. Similarly, for Kitchener’s Ribfest, members of the public are invited to dine with Prousky, dressed in her glamourous intestinal costume. Admiring the radical indifference and quiet power of our intestines, Prousky proposes that by honouring them we honour the various processes that keep us moving, even when we feel stuck.”
Photos by Alan Zeberek