Benefits of BDSM for trauma survivors | Meristems
The works are devoted to the presentation of non-normative sexuality and the liberation of the queer body.
The artist made them by hand in the inlay technique used to decorate wooden furniture. In relation to the matter of wood and the human body, she searched for natural representations of disease, otherness, self-regeneration, and growth. She discovered these qualities by working with burr, creative tissues, galls, and queer BDSM practices.
Considered a defect, a burr is a growth that results from the swelling of a tree’s trunk. It is caused by damage: it can be a virus, fungus, genetic defect, or mechanical injury. When a trunk is injured, scar tissue becomes active, which gradually widens the rings, creating bulges and changes in the arrangement of wood fibres. The infection can also stimulate the previously dormant side shoots, which start to build up in an uncontrolled, avalanche way, creating the so-called knots. The artist uses this “defective” material to affirm instincts and sexuality that cross the borders of patriarchal social norms.
In the series BDSM Benefits for Trauma Survival, Zeic explores the potential of queer BDSM practices in trauma processing. The titular meristems, on the other hand, are tissues made up of cells capable of dividing. An attack by insects will cause them to grow the so-called galls, i.e. abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues processed and controlled by herbivorous insects as their microhabitats. They are called galls after the Latin galla, “oak-apple,” or cecidia, from the Greek kikidion, “something that gushes out.” A gall becomes both a habitat and a food source for an insect, and can also provide physical protection against predators.
The artist uses the metaphors and matter of meristems, galls, and burrs to support nature for the development of space for queer life. By referring the social tissue to biology, she also undermines arguments about “natural” and “unnatural” human tendencies.
(Joanna Sokołowska for Biennale Zielona Góra 2022)
Neetlebrides | Zona Sztuki Aktualnej, phot. Jerzy Szreder i Janusz Piszczatowski | Liliana Zeic
