Thousands of eggshells, collected from cafes, restaurants and bakeries, are laid across the floor. Visitors are invited to walk across them barefoot. The cracking sounds, the sensation underfoot, the fragility and the giving way are not metaphors. They are the experience itself.

To arrive somewhere new is to know nothing. You learn slowly, carefully, conscious of every step. To walk on eggshells is to move through the world with that particular awareness, always mindful, always negotiating what might break beneath you or around you. This work was born from that feeling.

The work opened with a solo performance in which I walked blindfolded and barefoot across the shells, drawing on Butoh movement to tell the story through the body. On the wall behind me, a single whole egg was projected, held suspended and uncracked while the performance unfolded across the broken shells below. Only after the performance ended did the video continue, and the egg finally break.

A video plays on the wall, bare feet moving across eggshells, the frame containing only what is closest to the ground. I wanted audiences to feel that they were the ones walking.

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Why Does God Allow These Things Happen To Us? was first developed as an MFA project at the National Art School in Sydney, 2016, and shown in Shades of Red (solo exhibition) at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong in 2017. 

The 2023 version was created for Entwined Within, Willoughby Council, as part of the Emerge Festival in Sydney.

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