I Hope You Feel the Sun on Your Wings, 2024.
Video Installation on wooden structure
71 x 43 x 37 inches
I Hope You Feel the Sun on Your Wings is an homage to my late grandmother. The sculpture is composed of emptied picture frames that once lined the walls of my grandparents’ house, where they held photographs chronicling the lives of their children and grandchildren. Divested of their contents, the frames are reconfigured into a structure evocative of a birdcage.
The bird serves as a symbolic surrogate for my grandmother, who was an avid singer and longtime member of her church choir. My grandparents owned a pair of blue budgerigars for as long as I can remember, and after my grandmother passed, my grandfather tended to these birds with the same devotion he had shown her in her final years. During our visits in the last years of her life – years marked by a battle with Alzheimer's disease and ongoing mental illness – my grandmother communicated mostly through song, bursting into melody whenever she felt moved. In those moments, music seemed to offer her a certain amount of freedom. After she died, the birds’ chirping filled the house in much the same way – carrying on her spirit through song.
This sculpture acts as both a monument and meditation – an offering for a woman who experienced a great deal of trauma, in the hope that her spirit might exist peacefully, finally unburdened.
Installation at Wassaic Project as part of “Tall Shadows in Short Order”, 2024.
Installation view at Jimei x Arles as part of “A Hole to the Water”, 2024.
Installation view at Jimei x Arles as part of “A Hole to the Water”, 2024.
Installation view at Jimei x Arles as part of “A Hole to the Water”, 2024.