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SPIRIT PLATE
Spirit Plate engages with an ongoing Oneida funerary practice in which a large plate of food is prepared to sustain the spirit of the deceased during its daylong passage into the afterlife. The work considers the language of food, eating and gathering as a form of nourishment in its own right, drawing on the everyday exchanges and gestures through which we make plans to feed and care for one another. Here, words take the place of food, filling the plate and sustaining me through my own journey toward ancestral connection. Approaching my Oneida lineage from a distance, Spirit Plate considers how language, everyday rituals and gestures of care can become points of connection to cultural knowledge and inheritance.