Bruising Darkness [2014]
Bruising Darkness is an installation comprised of rocks and ropes. Rocks provide a foundation on the floor, there to be looked at, to be stepped on. Ropes descend from above, draping and looming over. Viewers enter into the humid tension of the space between. Rather than reinscribe a straight line between poles, Bruising
Darkness draws orbital paths amongst seemingly oppositional forces. The rift, the wound, the scar, the schism - here they shift from sites of shame to portals of potential.
In collaboration with Claire Arctander. On view at Lease Agreement in Baltimore summer 2014.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.
- On the Pulse of Morning, Maya Angelou
Perhaps there is some other way to live... This possibility has to do with demanding a world in which bodily vulnerability is protected without therefore being eradicated and with insisting on the line that must be walked between the two.
- Precarious Life, Judith Butler