alexis elton

Salt is known to purify. Tears are a salty alchemy that softens or melts those aspects of one’s personality that have become hardened and inflexible. Wicking is the process of evaporation through temperature shifts in an upward direction. Deserts, armpits, eyes, and oceans all wick salt. Bodies, oceans, and ecosystems need to maintain specific and delicate balances of salt. The salt mineral embodies ecological flows in water, earth, sunlight, sweat, and tears.

Solution: A Wicking was a durational and participatory performance that explored and presented the salt mineral in three different states: solution, dry, and crystalline. It incorporated salt that originated from a regional brine well near Seneca Lake, NY. Viewers were invited to soak their feet in salt brine solution, in order to shed or purify themselves. Nearby, I wove a net while I was standing in a pile of salt. The net served as a conduit between mineral phases, human and alchemical, artist and audience.