We Fold Open the House by Ahnika Wood

We Fold Open the House is a self-published artist’s book rooted in queer ritual and the act of archiving as a transformative practice. Through poetry, it reflects on the emotional process of piecing together and releasing kinship in times of collective turmoil. I drew from several years of personal journals and handwriting archives, treating them as raw material. To honor the life in these initial transmissions, I screen-printed them onto collected papers, presenting words as both sensory and gestural moments. These moments, layered into the text, transpose embodied and adaptive forms, echoing the fluidity of queer self-presentation. Repetition, misregistration, and spaciousness invite reflection on precarious becoming. Hand stitching throughout the book underscores the labor - it also allowed me to have a final passage to process the past through construction.