Propagation Station

Through narrative inquiry of care within a micro community of myself, baby blankets, text and aloe vera plants, my MFA thesis and support paper present a journey to better understand or come to know the complexities of care and place. My approach to narrative inquiry as a methodology for research in which I slowly and intimately interact with my micro community and present these relationships through text-based works and visual depictions of our material surfaces as both texture and tension. Surface, as an archive of touching, makes evident a troubling of exchange in acts of care. This paper questions what kind of temporality exists in the crevices of the surface and explores ways in which to participate in genuine temporal practices. My research will culminate in an exhibition in my home, which is presented as the work. I invite visitors to my intimate place, negotiating an opening up of the private to the public, hoping for a politely curious encounter.