Digestion is noble, beautiful, almost magical. Food enters the mouth and is passed through a system of chambers and tube-like organs as it is transformed into nutrients or waste. Our digestive system can provide a powerful metaphor for other metaphysical processes: digestion often takes place without acknowledgment, usually unseen or unnoticed, yet quietly central to the function of animal life. It is not a coincidence that many of those well-versed in the workings of the body's digestive system have suffered from its malfunction. Infections, stress, and sometimes mysterious causes can throw the system out-of-whack, can interrupt the delicate balance on which our bodies rely.
In Peyton Peyton’s practice, the absurdity and hilarity of having a body is explored through performance and fiber objects. Works such as Labber Rinse Repeat understand the passages and blockages of a digestive tract to be points of departure for rethinking our embodied experience of the world. Both an object which performs and a bodiless performance, Labber Rinse Repeat writhes and wafts through the gallery space in an overwhelming visual and sonic experience. Its colorful, intestinal tube calls on us to acknowledge that we cannot divorce our emotions and ambitions from the organs which make it all possible.
Peyton Peyton is currently based in New Haven, CT. She received her BFA in sculpture from the University of Georgia in Athens in 2016 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2020. Working primarily between sculpture and performance, she carefully considers the awkwardness and hilarity of being in a body. In her practice, she attempts to understand the internal dysfunction and memory of the biological garment. Peyton Peyton focuses on digestion- the point where one embodied site, self, or realm meets another- and the hypnagogic threshold between waking and dreaming. Through the accumulation of repetition, movement, and object based performance, she explores the way bodies function, fail, and age.
Peyton Peyton
Labber Rinse Repeat, 2020 (detail)
thread, acid-dyed nylon, plastic tarp, zippers, elastic, velcro, staples,
clear vinyl, air blowers, interval timers, decoy duck butts, cushion
dimensions variable to installation
photo by Sol Avi Erez
Peyton Peyton
Labber Rinse Repeat, 2020 excerpt
TRT: 0:49
video by Morgan Levy
Peyton Peyton
Labber Rinse Repeat, 2020
TRT: 2:46