Ancestral practices of sun-dried meat relied on outside conditions to slow down entropy and the perishing of the flesh. By removing moisture and adding salt, this technique of preserving meat allowed our ancestors to evolve, mainly because they were able to eat during periods when hunting was scarce. This turn in evolution brought us to a point today of such material abundance. How, in this new reality, do we update the foundational ritual of preservation itself?

I approach an inside-out logic of sun-drying: breaking the material, crushing it into pieces to turn it into dust—a way of preserving the essential stability of the shell while transforming it into a powder that will allow for a new material. I find this process to be a form of material gnosis. Knowledge emerges from observation via direct engagement with matter. Through the process of breaking and transformation, knowing becomes inseparable from making, and understanding is formed through material transformation itself. The original matrix becomes an aggregate. Within a soft membrane, assimilation takes place. In this process, sodium alginate—a natural polysaccharide derived from brown seaweed—is combined with the aggregate, which is then bathed in calcium chloride, an inorganic, highly soluble white salt, and finally sundried.

egg shell dust encapsulated in polymer gel

This act of breaking the matrix (eggshell) is a dynamic inversion of the ancestral preservation ritual. Where sun-drying delayed entropy to sustain life, this inside-out logic accelerates the entropic destruction of the established forms, to capture their essence and create a “new” stable material. The objective shifts from slowing the perishing of flesh (outside conditions) to purposefully inducing the collapse of a structure. The resultant dust, now encapsulated by the polymer gel, becomes a preserved potential for future material abundance.