Sacred Trash

Sacred Trash was a collaborative ritual and participatory performance that unfolded as a collective exorcism and reclamation. Rooted in both ancient and contemporary technologies of transformation, the work invited participants to externalize and embody their personal “demons”—not literal spirits, but internal burdens shaped by trauma, social conditions, and inherited belief systems.

The starting point for the project was the Babylonian incantation bowls of late antiquity: domestic ritual objects used to bind demons, protect households, and repel spiritual harm. These bowls—created by Jewish, Mandaean, and other magical practitioners—often featured drawings of demons that looked strangely innocent, almost childlike. This ambiguity sparked a core inquiry: what were these figures trying to say? What if they weren’t silenced or trapped, but allowed to speak?

Participants arrived with symbolic pieces of “trash”—personal or found objects imbued with emotional resonance. Through a guided sequence of ritual gestures, body scans, and somatic prompts, these objects were transformed into puppets: handmade embodiments of each participant’s demon. Drawing on ritual magic, folk craft, Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, and embodiment practices, Sacred Trash created a space where these internal figures could be named, seen, and interacted with.

Rather than treating the demon as something to eliminate, the piece explored what it meant to acknowledge it, listen to it, and even befriend it. Puppet-play and improvised dialogue allowed for emotional processing and unexpected moments of connection—within oneself, and with others in the group. In the end, each participant decided what to do with their demon: keep it, transform it, or ritually let it go.

The project was iterative, evolving between its first and second performances. The later version was more informed by somatics and collective dynamics, refining its structure through practice rather than prescription.

Sacred Trash also formed part of an ongoing body of work exploring Jewish magic and mysticism—particularly the esoteric and folk practices that were historically sidelined or erased under patriarchal religious authority. For the artist, raised in Orthodox Judaism and later estranged from its rigid frameworks, uncovering these traditions offered a way to reclaim spiritual inheritance on new terms. In this context, ritual became a tool not of submission, but of reimagining—queering and decolonizing inherited structures, and transforming them into something alive, embodied, and collectively held.

The piece raised open-ended questions: Were our ancestors foolish for believing demons could be bound in bowls—or did they understand something modern psychology is just beginning to remember? What knowledge lives in the margins of history, in the mess of trash and broken things? What happens when we stop trying to fix ourselves, and instead let our demons speak?

As with the artist’s larger practice, Sacred Trash embraced the use of found materials and spontaneous construction. The process was intentionally unrefined—more invocation than design—emphasizing the raw, transformative potential of communal ritual. The work made space for pain to become visible, for shame to be shared, and for healing to emerge through collective presence.