Victoria Lucas (b.1982, UK) is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art. She is currently a Platform20 artist-in-residence at Site Gallery, as part of the Freelands Artist Programme (2020 - 2022).

Victoria uses technology to remap, embody and entangle the material strata of landscapes, a process in which female subjectivity is reimagined and reclaimed in place. She often incorporates sculptural forms with video, photography, sound, and performance.

I dream of giving birth with her, on her. The moss is soft, a natural bed that supports my body and connects me to the inside of the earth like a membrane fusing me with the scared surface of ancient matter, deposited 350 million years ago. I think of my body, and how everything is made up of the same thing. I am the rock, I am the moss, I am the landscape.

The water in my body is drawn downwards towards the gametophytes. I imagine myself as the absent stone, compressed under the weight of time, bodily liquid oozing out of its encasement to quench the thirst of my bryophyte ancestors. Moss, the first land based plant. A unique environment that supports all other species to grow. She supports me now, as I bear down in what feels like the centre of the earth’s embrace.

The moss is magnificently hormonal. Radiating the essence of their matriarchal powers, their daughters thrive out of the violence that ravaged the earth. Their skill and resilience is powerfully silent. Their quiet knowing fills the quarry. I unwittingly lay upon a bed of radical feminists, and I can feel their power on my skin, in my lungs, in my blood. Here, I melt in to her presence silently and all that I am is reclaimed by her.

Heightened senses, the allure of the moss washes over me, filling my body with euphoric electricity. I breath deeply, calmly. Something inside it ignited, my own source of feminine power that has been laying dormant all of these years. Called up from the depths of my bones, from the pit of my stomach, from the inside of my veins. I lay relaxed yet alert. I hear their collective whispers activated by the breeze, beckoning my body to evaporate and merge with theirs.

Our bodies are powerful. I let go. Ecstasy. Sporophytes extend. Spores are released, floating across the turbulent breeze until caught by the earth’s grasp. Females colonise. Dwarf males are organised so that their seed rains down into extraordinary wombs. My blood is absorbed by the moss, enriching it with a metallic power that can be tasted on the damp air. My hands are red, spores stick to skin. Using the viscous coagulate to establish themselves.

Oxytocin ignites the depth of my being as new life take root and grows strongly within. Bone and sinew are formed, as we are absorbed towards the earth. Soil and clay compact underneath my fingernails, separating tissue from keratinous plate. Finger tips throb as blood pools, forming crescent shapes of crimson.

Fracturing, splintering, disintegrating, evaporating.

The cellular structures of my body dissipate, and I am drawn down towards the rhizoids that connect the colony to the earth. Gritstone vibrates as it meets my liquidity for the first time. I touch the surface of the rock and it senses my warmth. Barely audible whispers fill the air… gasps of ecstasy are released from in between the ancient grit. I absorb my ancestors’ energy through a process of osmosis.

Their embodiment enlivens innate powers.

The vibrations grow into tremors, and human matter fuses with rock. The rock engulfs eagerly, an interpenetration of human and nonhuman matter. The smell of ancient water is released in to the air. I sink in deeper, sliding myself between substance.