The Grief Performance, a series of works on paper I began during COVID, creates performance from breath. Breath, a vital lifeline, defines the boundary between life and death, and the stark reality of this distinction was unmistakable during the 2020 COVID pandemic. In response, I used my breath to create a series of tender memorials and funeral elegies, paying homage to those who were tragically lost. Now, six years later, The Grief Performance continues, extending the metaphor of breath into ongoing violence in the United States, where determining who is allowed breath is political, precarious, and contested. Click the image to enlarge.
Each performance of grief takes place in meditative solitude. Initially, I type, in a poetic form, words and phrases spoken by those mourning. These typed marks, with their glitches and mistakes, anchor each work in lived experience and embed shared testimony. Breath determines the density, direction, force, duration, and dispersal of the marks made. My body acts directly on the paper’s surface without mediation, translating an internal physiological rhythm into a visible object.
Through restraint, The Grief Performance makes breath visible. Breathing is a shared, unstable resource, biological, social, and political. The ability to breathe vitality into this work served as a reminder of life's fragility and a tribute to the resilience that prevails in the aftermath of profound tragedy.