Performed at Hows Howard? Gallery
May 3 - June 3, 2016
Multimedia performance
In Progress: Performing Grief
This project is a re-imaginging of the gallery space as a site of ritual.
To experience loss within contemporary U.S. secular society can be alienating, as mourning -- the public expression of grief -- is generally proscribed outside of limited spatial and temporal allowances. In Progress opened a space for dialogue and examination of mourning: Who warrants it, and to what extent? What are the limitations we place on the language of grief?
In Progress is derived from the phrase “Quiet please, life transition in progress” which was taped to the hospital room door during the last moments of my loved one's life. The project materials -- my hair, uncut since his passing, and clothing, gone similarly unworn -- are artifacts of that experience and of the period that followed, tangible reminders of that swath of time. These materials functioned as ceremonial objects in the gallery; visitors could cut them from my body and imbue them with new meaning. Working with the transformed materials and deconstructed burial shroud, I wove a tapestry that is at once a mourning cloth and a repository of grief artifacts; its size approximates the height and breadth of my own loved one's body.
Using the gallery as a site of meaning-making, these intimate transactions produced space, language, and objects which together complicate the status quo of what is acceptable and what is possible in the performance of grief.
This project is made possible by the Somerville Arts Council Grant for Interrelated Media. Special thanks to Natural Burial Company for its material donations.
This project is a re-imaginging of the gallery space as a site of ritual.
To experience loss within contemporary U.S. secular society can be alienating, as mourning -- the public expression of grief -- is generally proscribed outside of limited spatial and temporal allowances. In Progress opened a space for dialogue and examination of mourning: Who warrants it, and to what extent? What are the limitations we place on the language of grief?
In Progress is derived from the phrase “Quiet please, life transition in progress” which was taped to the hospital room door during the last moments of my loved one's life. The project materials -- my hair, uncut since his passing, and clothing, gone similarly unworn -- are artifacts of that experience and of the period that followed, tangible reminders of that swath of time. These materials functioned as ceremonial objects in the gallery; visitors could cut them from my body and imbue them with new meaning. Working with the transformed materials and deconstructed burial shroud, I wove a tapestry that is at once a mourning cloth and a repository of grief artifacts; its size approximates the height and breadth of my own loved one's body.
Using the gallery as a site of meaning-making, these intimate transactions produced space, language, and objects which together complicate the status quo of what is acceptable and what is possible in the performance of grief.
This project is made possible by the Somerville Arts Council Grant for Interrelated Media. Special thanks to Natural Burial Company for its material donations.