Milk
Milk is one of the first substances we encounter outside the womb-nourishment entwined with care, control, and contradiction. In my childhood, as an Iranian, milk was both a gift and a demand, framed as care but imposed by discipline, folded into gendered expectations. I refused to drink milk, and my refusal became an act of quiet defiance that is now fermented into a sensory memory.
Date
2025-2026
Performance
Milk is one of the first substances we encounter outside the womb-nourishment entwined with care, control, and contradiction. In my childhood, as an Iranian, milk was both a gift and a demand, framed as care but imposed by discipline, folded into gendered expectations. I refused to drink milk, and my refusal became an act of quiet defiance that is now fermented into a sensory memory.
2025-2026 Work in progress
Milk is one of the first substances we encounter outside the womb-nourishment entwined with care, control, and contradiction. In my childhood, as an Iranian, milk was both a gift and a demand, framed as care but imposed by discipline, folded into gendered expectations. I refused to drink milk, and my refusal became an act of quiet defiance that is now fermented into a sensory memory:
This work does not treat milk as a metaphor, but as a living, unstable body that transforms alongside us. Heated, it thickens, forms skin, changes smell, bubbles, and curdles into flesh. These changes happen in real time, thickening the air, stretching our senses, binding us to a slow, shared process. The room becomes fermentative̶warm, uncomfortable, intimate.
I call this “fermentation dramaturgy”: performance shaped by heat, time, and decay, where transformation is not hidden but witnessed. Milk becomes a co-performer, reacting to sound, light, and the audience’s presence, aging in relation to our bodies.
