Regarding Chickens was an installation that also functioned as a performance space. As an installation, Regarding Chickens was a glittery grotto made from dyed canvas encrusted with a mix of second-hand plastic craft store goods and found natural materials. Thematically, the project was dedicated to exploring chickens as a metaphor for love. As animals, chickens can be at once pet and property, simultaneously a source of income and an object of affection. The installation includes a repeated photograph of a mother restraining her pet chicken as her children’s hands reach in to caress it. Is this a scene of love, or animal husbandry? Embedded in one of two freestanding table-like sculptures is a photograph of a dilapidated three story chicken coop. The coop was an agricultural prototype designed by a poultry farming researcher in the mid-1950s; it later served as a way for a family to earn extra income and a striking architectural formation. In the second table piece, titled Roosters with Chiweenie, a photograph depicts roosters marching triumphantly into a kitchen in Oaxaca that is neither fully indoor nor outdoor. Like chickens, I see the artworks as a site of contradiction: crusty and smooth, venerated and loathed, earnest and frivolous.

As a performance space, Regarding Chickens was created to encircle violinist Keir GoGwilt as he performed music by Carolyn Chen, Celeste Oram, and Johann Paul von Westhoff; as well as poetry by Christopher and Keir GoGwilt. The work was exhibited across multiple venues including Actual Size Los Angeles, the Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater at the University of California, San Diego, and Best Practice in San Diego.

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