harvest, cut, die, pour.
– Gary, Indiana December 2024
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Uneditied Dying Ritual - Duration 1 min 10 sec
Indiana Sand Dunes // Lake Michigan - 29*F
Dying Ritual was performed at the Indiana Dunes, wearing a self-sewn burial dress. My former bedsheets are dyed with hibiscus flowers—the national yet non-native flower of Haiti— taking form of a traditional colonial dress. The garment is ornamented with sewn-on heirlooms, hair, leaves, dried flowers, twigs, citric acid, and baking soda. The poured dye consists of boiled tea from hibiscus leaves.
Guided by cycles of transformation—my dress preserves memory, inheritance, and testimony. Rooted in the aesthetics of antebellum colonial fashion, it carries the weight of history, evoking structures imposed upon my family yet reimagined through my hands. The dress is dyed in hibiscus, Haiti’s national flower. Its color holds both reverence and rupture—the blood of my ancestors, the blood of my body. Neither the style, nor hibiscus, nor the people are native to Haiti—yet all have taken root, claimed identity, and flourished.
I sewed the dress from bed sheets, repurposing it into a vessel to carry me beyond rest. It is my burial dress—something to comfort me in my final stillness. The dried flowers and foraged plants pressed into its surface remain beautiful to me despite no longer being alive. They are a record of Chicago’s local foliage, capturing a fleeting season in fiber and dye, mirroring my own desire to be preserved in what I create.
Fragments of personal and collective memory appear in embellishments on the dress—earrings from my aunt in Haiti, crystals I mined in Montana, a gifted cross, seeds, strands of my hair, pearls, and beads. Each object inscribed into the garment, marking it as an evolving narrative of lineage, land, and loss. I miss Haiti. I miss my family. In these artifacts, I feel them again.
During my performance, I poured hot hibiscus tea over my head, letting the warmth of ritual shield me from the cold. I walked into the 20-degree water, the fabric absorbing the lake’s sharp embrace until indistinguishable from the body. As waves lapped at my skin, I felt comforted by an overpowering spiritual and ancestral presence. The hibiscus dye rinsed out, leaving shifting hues—some areas washed clean, others darkened to black, an alchemical response to imbalance, to touch, to time.
This healing ritual brought me peace. It allowed me to conceive my strength, confirming I am my grandmother's child. I am strong like those who came before me, and I will accept my death as those fleeing captivity and oppression have done.
