Installation
Dimensions variable
Breast milk, stainless steel tray
Single-channel video (color, sound), 27:00
2026
I bought breast milk online.
In China this currently exists in a grey zone — not illegal, not regulated either. Most sellers are postpartum mothers with oversupply. Some are middlemen. I contacted four and chose the one with the fastest shipping. Cold chain. Minus four degrees.
I molded the milk into the shape of ancient Chinese knife coins — not the round coins with square holes that most people recognize, but the earlier kind, shaped like a small blade, with an edge.
I placed them on a stainless steel tray and turned on the camera.The melt took twenty-seven minutes minutes. First the edges softened. Then beads of water. Then the collapse. For about ten minutes in the middle, the blade shape was still legible but no longer solid — like jelly. After that: just milk.Milk has a smell. Not bad, not good — a body smell.
Halfway through filming, a fly came in and landed on the handle of one of the knives. I did not chase it away. It sat for a while, then left on its own.
Knife coins were used for trade two and a half thousand years ago. Breast milk is traded today. Between these two dates lies two and a half thousand years. In that time, money got harder, bodies got softer, and the layer between them got progressively thinner.
Scroll