Description:
This installation features glass and steel armatures that I welded and charred in a kiln to simulate disembodied and dispersed tree branches. The work is inspired by the abandoned and overgrown cemetery in which I first encountered my great-grandfather’s headstone that is shaped like a limbless tree. The branches and their shadows alludes to the generations of my family that have been forced to flee across the world as a result of pogroms, war, and embargoes. All of the people who would typically be there to look after these monuments have fled en mass as refugees. These branches hold varying shades of green misshapen precision blank optometric glass. Precision blanks are the precursor of what is used to make corrective lenses, they are a foil to the difficulties with memory that refugees have in not being able to see the past without distortion or blankness caused by trauma.
Title:
A Legacy of Loss (Disperse)
Year:
2019
Media:
Charred steel, precision blank optometric glass
Dimensions:
Installation size variable, 14 armatures
