2nd Year Final Show @ Michaelis
INTO
THIN AIR
2021
The Echo has made itself at home in my body. At first pushed together now pushing away. Like a secret my skin seems to remembers (Sounding in your silence)- I sound in resistance. Screaming at the sun (Screaming at the unplaceable self).
^^^ poem/prayer
Within this project I wanted to tackle my moments. How space feels and how I feel in it. The lens I looked through was that of whiteness. How whiteness and its supremacy fills and seeps. How it echoes and shadows. Its grandness. Its subtlety. It lingers. It hides. It is there. How easily it can find itself at home. It has built these structures that I walk in-between. (I wonder what that means);(I wonder what it sees when it sees me).
There are words here that we do not know of. There are words here that are being said: in the walls, in the corners, in the open, in the air, in the light, in the dark, by the sun and by the rain. I shout my own shadows.
(Where is my mirror?)
Thinking of the institution as a protective yet exclusionary space - my words fill and lose there (as light attempts and fails in capturing my voice). Such a space gives me power and I uphold its power through participating in its supremacy. I have gained access to a level of acceptance in the white world; in going to university, in being mixed and white passing. I melt into such a space - I consider my role in white supremacy.
The shadows and reflections act as imprints of the self. Presenting them to the wind – hoping the wind will whisper and roar them when I cannot. Resisting through infiltrating the air. Resisting like writing and writing until I’m there somehow, in and amongst the other histories that the air holds. I like that as I am sending these words out – they change – they are mine but they are also no longer- they are of something else – an offering? They are temporal- developing a life of their own through their relationship with time. Working with the natural world obstructed by structure as sunlight is confined by the parameters of the building. Each day the words wake up, move about, and slowly fade out.
The puddles act as another kind of shadow – a shadow in reflection – how do we sit with words? Despite the elusive nature of the piece, I hope it acts as I reminder to remain resistant: in the corner of your eyes, in the back of your mind- somehow always there- the importance in wondering with the words that stuck.