Lori Esposito’s arts research explores ways of moving with maternal grief that result in story residues. Her work seeks to slow down the rapid pacing of industrial progress to “move at the pace of repair at all scales of life living” (Erin Manning, 2020). Her repetitive material practices value the sensory desires of the body so that different forms of presence can be felt. A self-proclaimed pilgrim, she stretches out and compresses time to shift her perception and allow what is not useful to decompose.
Esposito’s performance practices understand that language, movement, and time are entangled. She put this into practice tracking her specific divergent impulses and nurturing maternal connections with the outside. Her practice is committed to writing with bodily and temporal differences rather than attempting to cure or normalize it. Esposito follows crip time and process philosophy to reframe the moments in which grief washed over. She finds ceremony for unruly maternal bodies so they can escape, or split, from their dual memories and from oppressive representations of mothers.
Esposito has an ongoing drawing and painting practice that explores the polarizing and twinning dynamics of sisterhood, childhood memories shared with plants, and underwater life.
Esposito’s work has received support from the Ohio Arts Council, the Ucross Foundation, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hambidge Center, and Santa Fe Arts Institute. She has taught at various universities, K-12 schools, cultural centers, museums, and arts and health organizations. Her work has been exhibited internationally and regionally, and most recently she earned a Doctorate of Philosophy from The Ohio State University. Esposito is a dedicated neurodiversity arts advocate and is committed to transformative justice in disability art education spaces. She acknowledges and takes seriously the disproportionate forms of oppression that bodies of difference experience, and the consequences this has on everyone.
If you are interested in an evaporation and dyeing writing workshop or individual experience, this is available in person or can be shared through accessible image prompts and audio tours over email. If you are interested in receiving drawing and painting instruction in-person or online, please reach out. I charge on a sliding scale and am available for group instruction.
