InVocation is an immersive sculptural installation exploring collective memory, sex worker labor, and rituals of release. Originally commissioned by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art the work continues to evolve, with new elements added and adapted to each site.
A curtain-like monument woven from theater hemp rope—used in both performance rigging and Shibari—blurs the boundary between sacred and profane, work and ritual. Woven into it are totemic objects donated by queer sex workers, each imbued with personal significance and history. Inspired by Japanese memorial ceremonies for worn tools like combs and sewing needles, InVocation honors the spirit and service of these laboring objects.
The viewer is invited into a space of tenderness and transformation—part shrine, part dressing room, part invocation of lives and labors too often hidden or erased. InVocation is a call to confront the politics of labor, hold memory in material form, and center histories too often dismissed.