reimagines the jock cup (codpiece) as a queer kinship architecture: protective gear designed to safeguard reproductive organs, and with them a presumed biological future. In this work, that futurity is treated as unstable. For MTF transgender bodies, “the future” is often held in suspension by medical, social, and ecological conditions, not secured by anatomy alone.

The piece is a 3D printed bioresin scaffold coated in a chemically crosslinked biopolymer layer I developed to minimize external contaminants while still allowing gas exchange. Inside, the cup is inoculated with as “soup” grown from six cultivated skin microbiome samples from members of my chosen family, forming a micro-terrarium where parts of us can live, die, and putrefy together. Armour turns hard protection into soft infrastructure of decay: a container for shared biological time, intimate decay, and kin-making beyond heteronormative reproductive certainty.