A summoning of ghosts, a spell for ease of the heart
Latex is a charged material that carries the memory of intergenerational queer trauma. During the HIV/AIDS crisis, it became both a reminder of loss and the very medium that sustained life. Later, in queer and BDSM cultures, it was reappropriated as a surface of desire and protection, where power regimes over sexualities and bodies are reorganized. At the same time, latex remains entangled with histories of medicalization and pathologization within the medical-industrial complex, where bodies are suspended between survival and collapse. As a queer body with a chronic disease, Leman follows these lines, tracing how latex embodies the tensions of trauma and survival.
A summoning of ghosts, a spell for ease of the heart is a gesture from a queer crip body, both fragile and alive. Hair, nails, dirt, plants, latex, things that hold memory, are gathered together, woven into skins that remember and carry grief. Ghosts are summoned, not to frighten, but to make space for mourning, for care, for ease. The installation, saluting Felix Gonzalez-Torres from its corner, offers a place where grief is held gently, and survival can breathe alongside it. With the light placed at the top of the latex skin under soil, the installation appears like a flickering flame when viewed through a mobile phone; the flicker cannot truly be captured. It shifts and wavers, alive, just as memory and mourning do, always slightly out of reach, always in motion.
