lwrds duniam

Pachamama spell (2023)

site-specific sculptural assemblage and performance documentation.

collaborating with the land herself, Pachamama—Mother Earth, this work emerged as a ritual for radical presence, imprinting broken pieces of my multiple hybrid hurting selves, and seeking moments of healing and care through ancient arboreal magic.

as a forest witch, I work with the woods as means of research. “Pachamama spell” is a work about kinship with Tree Elders, both as a generative material collaborators, and as a witnesses to my journey in ancestral healing and accountability. I have an Irish ancestor, by the name of George Duniam, who in the 1830’s began travelling to Callao, Perú as a ship captain with the so-called “South America Trade”; over the next 40 years he would be implicated in the trafficking on enslaved peoples, antiquities smuggling, and grave robbing.

intimately connecting with the woodland energies and the life emanating from the site-specific sculptural installation I created during my month-long stay at Live Art Ireland for their SOIL Residency, I documented a 3-hour performance on May 3, 2023 in North Tipperary, Ireland.

the sculptural assemblage consists of found arboreal materials, a khipu of repurposed fabrics, moss, stone, and steel mesh. Khipu is an Indigenous Andean technology, a communication device, and mnemonic system of string and knots.