Touching Toxicity, Textile Series, NYC

Textile Series

just practice_2026
NYC, Denver, California Bay
Researcher, Interviewer, Textile Maker

In collaboration with Sophie Weston Chien. Commissioned by Northeastern’s Center for the Arts and Mills College Art Museum. Special thanks to to Jen Brooks, Hana Cohn, Karen Weston-Chien, Kristina Faul, Shreya Shankar, Tuft Love, Rob Benner, Tejas Parekh, Suzanne Pierre, Shalini Argwal, Juliana Barton, Evelyn O'Donoghue, Kayleigh Perkov, Stephanie Hanor, and Bz Zhang for your support

Touching Toxicity is a series of textiles that document the relationship between toxicity, the environment, and the residents of Northern California’s East Bay Area. Environmental remediation often focuses on removing the harm wrought by toxicity; sites are returned to a pre-toxic state through the removal or capping of harmful materials. In Touching Toxicity, we ask what this framework of return means given larger and longer trends of environmental harm, prompting viewers to consider what remediation means given the scale and violence of human development in the Bay Area over the past several hundred years, which has irrevocably altered the landscape – both for the peoples native to the Huchiun territory and the ecosystem at large.

Thank you to our interviewees: Connie Zheng, Danielle Rivera, Gaby Seltzer, Mari Rose Taruc, Millie Calzada, Phoenix Armenta, and Ratha Lai for speaking with us.