Is There a Future?
A performance on motherhood, ancestry, and climate grief
London, 2019

Is There a Future? was a live performance born from the profound tension between climate instability and the enduring desire to bring life into the world. Performed while pregnant with my first child, the piece asked a question both intimate and collective: in a time of ecological collapse and uncertainty, can we still imagine a future—and one worth living for?

The performance began with breath—mine—exhaled into a piece of glass, a gesture honoring the fragility and continuity of life. As I stood before the audience, I began to draw an ancestral tree, tracing the lines of those who came before me—my forebears, their stories, their survival. This lineage formed a grounding structure through which the performance unfolded.

Chairs were arranged for the audience, each representing an ancestor. Audience members were invited to sit, and as they did, I washed their feet—an act of reverence, care, and humility. My partner, standing behind me, initiated the performance by washing my feet, a gesture that honored both support and reciprocity in the act of creation.

The performance culminated in an offering to the Earth. I took a piece of raw clay, molded it with my hands, and pressed it against my skin, covering myself with soil. This act, both intimate and elemental, evoked the myth of Eve, the deep intelligence of the body, and the sacredness of the Earth as mother. It was a ritual of connection—between the maternal body and the planet, between ancestry and future, between despair and the resilient impulse to create life.

In the face of ecological anxiety, Is There a Future? responded not with answers but with a living, breathing gesture of hope: a commitment to love, to lineage, and to a future still imagined through the body of a woman.