100 Bowls (2021-2023)
Midway through the pandemic, I began encountering abandoned toilets on walks to my studio with alarming frequency. At first I documented the bowls with the camera on my phone as a joke to send to friends. Whether by the grace of Baader-Meinhof or the boom of pandemic-fueled renovations, the bowls kept coming. An archive began to take shape. Soon, spotting a toilet on the sidewalk filled me with an odd yet undeniable joy.
All the photographs in this series arrive directly from my phone, titled by the timestamp of their making. When composing the photographs, artistic pretensions were couched in favor of casual documentation. The majority of bowls were discovered on the sidewalks of Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, or Fort Greene. On one hand, the series reveals the entrails of dozens of properties in flux across these rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. On the other hand, it recalls Marcel Duchamp’s proclamation that “the only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.”