Mae Howard

The Tetherings 
2022–2023


The Tetherings series positions medical waste as a site of material investigation. Conjuring queer disabled elder Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha’s notion of the “cosmology of mess,” The Tetherings expose the brutality of interconnected systems using methods of burning, tangling, and grafting, exploring the connection between discard, debilitation, and excess. As relics of heat alchemy, the medical tubing deviates into a fleshly corroded form. The Tetherings lurk within registers of toxicity, cripping time and sensation as they curl away from sterility and curative imaginaries. Through material and formal specificity of maimed medical tubing, the series suggests the impossibility of figurative representation of disabled bodies. Instead, the use of abstraction proposes a focus towards the violent systems of coercive power that debilitate and disable. This is not a body suspended, but ricochet between conditions of support and malfunction, fusion, and breakdown.

Materials: Used and new medical tubing, Thera-Band rubber resistance band (medium), Thera-Band rubber resistance band (extra thin), steel L-hook anchor, stainless steel wire cable, Thera-Band latex resistance tubing
Documentation by Neighboring States

A nest of burnt medical tubing hangs suspended by an l-hook in an open gallery. The windows to the left cast a shadow on the ground that is interlaced with that of the sculpture.
Burned medical tubing with golden crust hangs suspended by light pink resistance band.

Documentation by Perri Cohl




Medical tubing twists into itself with white resistance bands melted onto golden crust as bandage like gauze.

Documentation by Perri Cohl
Burnt medical tubing torpedoes downwards, casting a twisted shadow outwards on the concrete gallery floor.

Documentation by Perri Cohl
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