During the Coronavirus pandemic, toilet paper initially became a signifier of fear: it quickly vanished from stores and was not available in the United States for several weeks. On March 18, 2020, I began documenting quarantine explorations with toilet paper rolls and posted daily results on my Instagram as a simple, daily studio regulatory exercise.
The oddness of isolation and explorations in the mundane also led to a friendship with Leticia Magalhães Gomes. Our aligned explorations with the ephemeral of the domestic and detritus of motherhood brought us together during the initial months of the pandemic. Our friendship emerged through Zoom meetings, discussions of theory, and thoughts of collaborations. As we neared the end of one pandemic year, yet unable to meet in person, we decided to honor our friendship with a Call and Response in February of 2021. Our notion was to use an object that was indicative of the time, a toilet paper roll, and theorize with the mundane. The resulting conversation, #ToiletPaperRollCallandResponse, begins with a poem framing our meeting and play, and the words and images which defined a new and cherished connection.