Guts of My Guts
Show text by Julia Wolf

Monica C. LoCascio’s ‘Guts of My Guts’ at HALLE13 engages in a critical materialist exploration, presenting symbiotic networks that challenge and expand upon established notions of identity, corporeality, epigenetics, trauma, and memory. Coinciding with LoCascio’s personal evolution into motherhood, the exhibition challenges the orthodox notion that knowledge is merely the offspring of impersonal observation. It proposes, instead, a visceral form of ‘knowledging’ born of tangible, material engagement with the cosmos, as conceptualised by Karen Barad (2007). This philosophy is materialised through living installations, agents of change composed of bacterial cellulose, scientific paraphernalia repurposed for artistic expression, and threads woven from remnants of past lives. 

Informed by the doctrine of "Symbiogenesis" and the pioneering work of Lynn Margulis, LoCascio’s collection ponders the transient borders of selfhood and the profound influence of microbiology in constructing ecologies of the self. LoCascio’s assemblage defies the conventional, linear narratives or definitive conclusions; it embodies a complex, paradoxical structure that is at once chaotic and intelligible, continuously weaving the fabric of reality. 

As a result, LoCascio’s work is an assertion of ‘code’ reimagined: a defiance of the strict genetic script dictating biological inheritance, advocating instead for a lexicon of courage, playfulness, intimacy, and care that defies binary categories. It is a call to recognise a multiplicity of narratives and a collaborative ethos, positioning the self as an integral component of a larger ecological matrix. This stance is a provocative challenge to the techno-capitalist paradigm, urging a reevaluation of interdependence as a critical modality for contemporary existence and innovation. 

Works cited:
Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press (2007). 

Lynn Margulis, “Words as Battle Cries: Symbiogenesis and the New Field of Endocytobiological,” Bioscene 40, no. 9 (1990): 673-677.