to mourn this loss, our last exhibition was appropriately titled "things that disappear", and all selected pieces wrestled with the reality of insistent disappearing in our lives - from buildings to people, memories to relationships. special attention was given to installations that embodied an act of disappearing; most works were scratched, painted, carved into the walls with maximum use of negative space and intentionally designed to remain in the studio and disappear with the building when it is demolished.
i debuted as an installation artist, collaborating with a couple of other friends to create a "confessional tent." draped in black cloth to form a black box-like room, the confessional tent served as an installation the prompted participants to release the burdens they carried inside: grief, bitterness, regrets, heartaches. the tent was dark inside except for a shaft of light that fell through a hole cut at the top to illuminate a paper shredder, painted black and suspended from the ceiling. the walls were bare and dark except for one quote scrawled in white chalk on one long wall:"when i kept silent, my bones grew old through groaning all the day long."
participants were invited to write their burdens on pieces of white paper with charcoal pencils or publicly declare their burdens by writing it in chalk on the walls. if they wrote on the paper, they would then step up to the lighted shredder and put their paper through the shredder. pieces would fall directly to the floor beneath - a pile of white, shredded confessions.
i also collaborated on another piece, one that was much more personal. at our 'urbanity project' opening, my friend glen had come to show his support. a photograph was taken of him in deep conversation with our friend oli, amid the art and other attendants. as glen recently passed, it seemed an appropriate memorial to pay honor to him somehow in this exhibition.
my friend faith, a very talented artist, reproduced the photo onto the very same wall where glen and oli had leaned. using ink and actually removing pieces of plaster from the wall, she created an exact life-size replicate of the photograph. with layers of the plaster and wire beneath the walls showing through, the whole reproduction had an eerie feel to it - glen as the only fully drawn person in a sea of negative space.
original photo
reproduction
faith asked if i would write a poem in lieu of an artist's statement. i agreed but it was much harder than i'd anticipated. i had to remember. i had to think about details - his voice, his face, the way he carried himself. i had to force my mind back into his presence - or his presence back into my mind. i had to wrestle with the undercurrent of grief and the continued aftershock. i had to consider how i think about death. and i had to do it all under time constraint for the exhibition.
the process was both painful and cathartic. in writing it, i was trying to force some sort of closure by the poem's end - more so because i feel like i should have closure, not because there was any real sense of closure. it was good to receive feedback from friends and come to terms with not having closure, with letting questions remain unanswered.
anyway. here it is.
Letter to the Dead
You occupied this space, once. Your voice carried as a warrior’s call, clear and brassy. Your speech – clipped and precise, a rapier slicing the air. Your endless spouting on politics, on love, on how tea ought to be drunk. Your hands – strong, athletic – never shaky, never fumbling. Space widened around you, aura rippling like a golden globule of oil in water. Every ounce of you, grounded.
Until to the ground you fell. Body flat, a forgotten plank. Gravity.
You disappeared without trumpets or kisses. No last glance from a twinkling eye, no wave from the closing elevator door. No letters, no cards, no sentences scribbled in haste on the back of some ripped note. Just sudden vacuum.
How does space become negative? How does nothingness become so unbearable?
We pressed our Sunday best. We spoke in measured tones and weighed words, dishing comfort like winter’s stew. We shuffled down corridors, fear dressed as sorrow. All the while muffling wails that would quiet a banshee.
Do we pay penitence now or are they coins too meager and too late?
Memories of you burst like sudden light - aurora borealis. Flash of brilliance, then pitch black.
Are you the dust and we the breath, or is the other way around? Perhaps you are here, waiting quietly in the dark. Are you touching the walls, pacing the floors, reaching out to brush our skin, missing bodies once warm and familiar?
Perhaps you tread with ghosts, drinking bowls of wine, pouring libations to the living. The silly, silly living. Perhaps the eyes of the dead see so much more than what the living will ever know or comprehend.
Or perhaps we squint, through darkened glass, searching for dappled sun to guide our trembling steps.
Glen Camille El-Hayek
February 7, 1978 – March 22, 2011
