The Proxy Baptism Project

“The Proxy Baptism Project” A meditation on empathy, consent, and communal ritual, this performance unfolds as a live, public confessional. One by one, community members step to a microphone and offer something in need of healing. In response, two performers baptize themselves—cleansing by proxy—while the audience witnesses the exchange through live and projected video. The work weaves together quilting techniques from the Appalachian Mountains, durational performance methods, and inherited religious practices.

Every day in Mormon temples, thousands of people are baptized on behalf of the dead. Beginning at age twelve, participants put on white robes and wait in line to enter a font raised on the backs of sculpted oxen. As each person is submerged, a list of deceased names—Mormon or not—is read aloud. Over the years, families of Holocaust victims and celebrities have filed lawsuits to stop unauthorized baptisms, raising the question: If you don’t believe in it, why does it matter? What does it mean to practice empathy—or ritual—without consent?

In December 2023 at the Rensing Center in Pickens, South Carolina, artist Stephanie Sutton and I set out to create our own rituals of baptism at a waterfall used for over 200 years by a local Baptist church. Responding to the land, the people, and the history of the site, we developed rituals grounded in the geography and the traditions we encountered. Drawing from ritual-making techniques and the Mormon Church’s onboarding process for baptism by proxy, we filmed every act: baptism by water, worthiness interviews, guided testimonies, the creation of sacrament, communion, and even the inclusion of cattle.

The performance at Goodyear Arts in Charlotte, NC (April 2024) incorporated footage from these Rensing Center rituals alongside a live confession from a woman who had been baptized in the Mormon church against her will. During her confession, I was baptized by proxy—a reversal of the original tradition. A secular baptism intended to enact a release for her. Dressed in white robes, Stephanie and I consumed one hundred communion cups of grape juice and crackers before she immersed me in a cow trough.

The confession and baptism ritual were co-created through private interviews with the participating confessor—an intentional, researched process developed during our residency at the Rensing Center.

Goodyear Arts, Charlotte NC 2024