In my practice, making work out of archives is akin to breathing new life into the dead. I saw archival boxes as coffins — a final resting place — and then as cocoons — an intermediate site of transformation. To commune with and revive the dead through archival work is a form of magic, and requires necromantic powers. Following this train of thought, I worked with the department of Conservation and Housing at Yale to make custom archival boxes bearing symbols of moths and cicadas, two insects that undergo complete metamorphosis in their cocoons, but still retain their memories after the radical change. They embody to me the latent hope and promise of archives, and my etching of their forms into the archival containers constitutes a blessing, a talisman, a spell.

As a spin-off, I also made prints inspired by library catalog cards and distributed them in a catalog card cabinet at Sterling Memorial Library. Long defunct, the cabinet has since been populated by anonymous notes of encouragement, rumors, and contemplation. It felt only right that my moths and cicadas should join this ecosystem, once obsolete but thriving with new life.