A Life Grounded in Tea, 2021.

A culmination of reflections and images, this project explores the intersection of the human and material world through the substance of tea. As I embark on the seemingly simple task of creating my own chai recipe, I employ my senses as an intermediary force; the spices and I engage in a dialectical conversation, prompting the subtle change to my chai recipe with each taste test. In doing so, I contemplate the ways in which material culture is rhetorical and how rhetoric is material. That is, engaging in the material world is shown to directly influence my actions, bringing retoricity to material objects. And, unlike usual depictions of rhetoric that characterize it, as well as other forms of communication, as being intangible and hence immaterial, it is evident that rhetoric becomes material in the way in which it is able to make changes physically conceivable in the world.