Sawdust

Sawdust was a solo performance that explored memory, transformation, and elemental forces through the materiality of sawdust. Rooted in personal history and ancestral craft traditions, the work reflected on the legacies of woodworkers and blacksmiths, mourning what was lost while honoring what remained. Sawdust—once part of living trees—became a site of ritual, labour, and imagination, evoking childhood play and the cyclical nature of creation and decay.

The performance unfolded in an intimate studio setting, quiet and minimal. A large pile of sawdust served as the central focus—a mutable landscape shaped by the performer’s body through repetitive, rhythmic movements. These gestures echoed acts of sweeping, gathering, and circling, invoking the presence of water as an elemental force of renewal and connection. Sweat and tears merged with dry dust, symbolizing the interplay of life and death, moisture and dryness, memory and transformation.

Audience members were invited into a contemplative environment—warm, intentional, and close. Options for masks or distance were provided due to dust exposure. Documentation through photography preserved the ephemeral nature of the ritual.

This performance was both personal and communal: a gesture of mourning and offering, a way to connect with elemental forces and ancestral legacies, and an invitation to witness transformation through embodied action.