MONICA DUNCAN

Breathing as a stone is a video and performance installation that draws inspiration from the small but resilient plants in Wave Hill’s Alpine House, and the history of camouflage studies based on rock outcroppings in Van Cortlandt Park. By incorporating geological materials like granite and quartzite—known for their strength and resistance to weathering—Duncan’s installation becomes a framework for adaptive strategies that oscillate between visibility, support, and concealment, central to broader ideas of identity, originality, becoming, and social change.

Using choreography, video projection, soft sculpture, natural materials, and sound, Duncan invites visitors to become plant, rock, lichen, and more. She explores camouflage as a form of empathy, to be in companionship with another and one’s surroundings through embracing their shape, pattern, and pose. Through her physical embodiment, the artist also explores what it is like to be “someone or something’s rock,” or a system of support. Performative text scores invite viewers into this exploration of how non-human embodiment can guide us toward strategies of resilience, mutualism, and community support.