Holdfast
2026
Barnacle shells, individually sculpted copper elements, copper foil, LED lights, electrical wire, and found objects
Variable dimensions
Holdfast takes the barnacle as a figure through which to consider attachment, movement, and the persistent desire to belong. Carried through the ocean yet firmly fixed once attached, barnacles hold a contradiction between mobility and permanence. Their calcified shells protect small interior chambers; they live in dense colonies while each retains an enclosed space of its own.
In the installation, individual barnacles are altered with sculpted copper forms, pierced and illuminated from within. Exposed electrical wires extend between them and across discarded domestic objects. Their hardened shells become small architectures of shelter, while the illuminated voids inside evoke spaces that can be inhabited, abandoned, remembered, or imagined as home.
Holdfast stays with the desire to attach—to a place, a structure, another body, or an idea of home—even as the conditions around it continue to shift. Rather than locating belonging in a fixed destination, the work holds movement and permanence, proximity and separation, shelter and exposure in unresolved tension.