Lye is a corrosive solution produced after wood ashes are soaked in water. When combined with animal or plant fats, lye yields soap. Although it is a residue of fiery destruction, soap functions as an instrument of cleansing. leach is interested in this contradiction.

The performance recalls soap’s colonial history and its associations with Christian missionaries who distributed the substance to whiten and lighten supposedly “unclean” racialized subjects. In the name of God, soap was proffered as a commodity that could approximate moral integrity and civility just as easily as it could erase memories of harm committed by evangelizing practitioners.

leach borrows from Psalm 26:6 to construct a sermon around the phrase, “I will wash my hands among the innocent.” Inviting audiences to shed their guilt before washing their hands with homemade soap, the performer Asia Stewart extends the possibility of deliverance, absolution, and forgiveness. Concerned with the cost of cleanliness, this performance interrogates the insistence that benevolence can persist in the face of repeated histories of violence.