All Peace Comes to Sit by My Side

2022

Mixed medium installation with mineral pigments, watercolor, rice paper, incense ashes, human hair, soy wax, paper pulp, stone clay, copper wire, rubber tree leaves, and branches

Dimensions variable

An intimate ritual of observation and its residue are revealed to create a meditative space for self-reflection to confront the ever-changing truth.

Personal investigation and reflections are encapsulated in a bare wall frame, where fragmented body perceptions occupy the negative space, weaving observed reality from numerous moments into a continuous dialogue between human and nonhuman bodies, light and shadow, roughness and fragility, as well as time traces from natural processes and manual labor.

Facing the frame, a creature of hybrid materiality sits on the ground. Paper mache made from rice papers with daily calligraphy practices composite roots, branches, bones, spine, pelvis, ribcage, and limbs of the hybrid creature while flesh invades. Emotions, contemplations, and realizations flow through ripped cotton paper, twined with chains of hand-woven copper wires.

Multiple perspectives unfold all at once. Bodies, as both the subject and the object, lead to a method of approaching the world beyond preconception, a mindset for extending and merging all life forms and their environments. Momentary peace resides.

That any real and true connection
Is a disease of our ideas.
Nature is parts without a whole.
This perhaps is that mystery they speak of.

- Fernando Pessoa, The Keeper of Sheep

Body Observation

Know Thyself
A Ritual

An intimate experiment with one’s being

I
Locate one inch of the skin
Anytime, anywhere
Start with what is convenient for visual observation

II
Confront the skin

To gaze
To breathe

III
Be still, be gentle
Surrender
Receive only what is offered by this piece of you

IV
Let this inch of skin walk into you, independently

Let it exist

V
Close your eyes, lingering