Walking around, I caught a glimpse of what remained from my wheat paste excursion a few nights before. Some of the kids have been removed or painted over, but most still stand, looking forlornly oblivious in their respective environments. The ephemeral nature of the project seems a perfect fit for my forays into memory.
Such a vulnerable act warrants an explanation, so here goes.
At first the project was about taking something private and crossing the line into the public realm. Many years ago I collaborated with my good friend to install a living space in a commercial gallery. We gathered our inherited collections; photo albums, shells, trinkets, dolls, doilies, souvenir spoons- and placed them in the gallery space along with living room furniture, a kitchen table and some other common household items. Then we labeled everything in the archival museum style, including ourselves.
The Children is basically a reverse of our (Re)Collection show. I am installing old photographs of my siblings and I on the street. Most people won’t even darken the doorway of a gallery, let alone go in. My objective is to exhibit to the biggest audience possible. It was hard, leaving something so personal in a place where I had absolutely no control over the outcome. But here lies the beauty, I can’t control how people receive The Children. And I don’t want to.
Are they lost? Orphans in a world far bigger and meaner than the one they knew growing up. Perhaps it reflects my state of being during the artistic process, just sort of existing in the fragile space between memory and reality. I want this image to get stuck in people’s heads.
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