Excerpt from video of firing ceremony filmed and edited by Dima Mabsout, Laguna Creek Beach, Santa Cruz, CA
What is the role of social practice and the collective imagination in moments where political violence and oppression want to render us powerless?
Night firing with the volunteers and theater troup of Bread & Puppet, Vermont, USA
In honor of the countless bodies we have witnessed in pieces in the last years, LIMBS are cyclical community art making events and gatherings, travelling to different sites and communities to bridge experiences of grief, joy and collective power.
By making clay limbs together and firing them in the earth in Ceremony we co-create our rituals of regeneration.
A selection of limbs were mounted in plaster in wooden frames for the exhibition at INDEXICAL Santa Cruz
The charred limbs are excavated, exhibited and sold to raise funds for the Ghassan Abu Sitta Children’s fund to support reconstructive limb surgery and trauma care for the children.
Audience in moment of stillness before performance on the opening at Indexical. The exhibition included a 3 part programming
Limb excavation after Bread and Puppet’s “Oh you best descendants” theater show, Vermont, August 2025
How can this modality of social practice address other social and environmental issues?
LIMBS is co-directed with Dima Mabsout as the Unidentified Body Parts Collective