Jill H. Casid, “Spirochetes of Contact”, 2019

Spanning the back part of the gallery, Spirochetes of Contact takes its name and animating figure for the biopolitics of public sex from the spirochete form (Greek for spiraling hair) of the bacterial agent of Lyme disease Borrelia burgdorferi spread by infected blacklegged ticks (known as deer ticks). Here it takes the materialized form of 28 original SX-70 Polaroid prints with their delicate surface emulsions and distinctive white borders uncovered and unprotected. These fragile originals are laid bare and exposed across the surface of a 16-foot-long lightweight, precarious and yet flexible wooden support structure that was conceived in collaboration with and fabricated by sculptor Sylvie Rosenthal to echo the sun-bleached and sea-salt rubbed wood of the boardwalk infrastructure of Fire Island, once the epicenter of the AIDS crisis (that is not over) and now ground-zero for Lyme Disease.

Jill H. Casid, “Spirochetes of Contact”, 2019, SX-70 Polaroids, wooden support structure, conceived in collaboration with and fabricated by Sylvie Rosenthal. 30 x 192 x 12 inches

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