Levi Taylor Booker

RECLAMATION: HOLY ARMOR is a performance functioning as a ritualistic meditation on years of learning to inhabit a body--a trans, dysphoric body-- and the intentionality it takes to make it a home.

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With this piece, I establish a relationship and comparison between the fruit “body” and my own. The process of ripping the grapefruit peels from their core in both a violent manner that completely mangled the insides as well as a more careful, intentional, and preserving manner highlights the dichotomy of how having to modify and reclaim one’s body is simultaneously difficult and chaotic yet thought-through and with careful, sustained determination. Sewing them together and wearing the garment made of peels becomes like a ceremonial robe– or a form of armor– that not only shields my body, but expresses a raw vulnerability with the insides of the peels facing outward. Transferring my piercing jewelry from my body to the peels and creating a serotonin tattoo at the heart is a direct representation of some of the ways reclamation is possible–both being choices made to “modify” the body to one’s desire.

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The closing element to this performance being a nod to holy communion and a cyclical experience of reuniting with myself by personally eating them, and connecting with others by offering pieces for viewers to eat as well.