My walk with death started at a young age. My first understanding of the finality of death was suicide. At the age of 5 I was sat down and told that a dear family friend, Petros, took their own life. The emphasis surrounding his death and the deaths I experienced in the following years came from an evangelical presbyterian lens which emphasised the importance that at the time of death that body was no longer theirs. Their soul drifted from their body and it was my childlike understanding that it was sinful to mourn my connection with their physical form.
In this exhibition, ‘for you, who is still living’ I wanted to walk with each of you as I did when I watched my best friend, Ellen, “leave her earthly body” to go beyond the veil. I could not move on with my processing of a loss at this magnitude without properly mourning her as I knew her- as a body and a vessel. I had the honor of casting Ellen’s hands on her death bed. In that process I healed much of what my child self needed in order to make sense of the absurdity of death. Afterall, I knew Ellen for all that she did with her hands, I knew her for her laugh and her
smile, I knew her as a body and soul intertwined with mine and all those who loved her. This exhibition focuses on the intimacy of hands and the history they all hold, familial heirlooms and conflict which both surface in the wake of death, and the rituals which are born in grief.
This is volume 1 of your guide beyond the veil,
‘for you, who is still living.’
