Post Opera

An electric medical bed’s grinding motor is amplified with contact microphones, while dangling wind chimes inject haunting serenity. Urinary catheter bags are remade using clear plastic glue. The work blurs a hospital recovery room with a stage – probing the ongoing labor of survival under capitalism. Ritualized performance cites medicalized transition as reproductive, social, and embodied work. It asks: Can surgical transformation resist the demands of legibility, instead embracing pain, pleasure, and self-sovereignty as forms of reclamation?

Installed as a part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition exhibited in The Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Curated by Misa Jeffereis (Associate Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis), Egbert Vongmalaithong (Assistant Curator, ICA at VCU), and Chase Westfall (Head of Gallery and Exhibitions, VCUarts Qatar), the 2025 exhibition reveals a cross-section of emergent practices that are rooted in collaboration, experimentation, and the urgency to make meaning in an ever-changing world.