Absence Does Not Disappear, Inkjet prints, Personal Objects Installation, Video Projection, 2019-in progress
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As the November sky darkens, my grandmother passes away in her solarium with her favorite view: fields as far as the eye can see. In her will, she requests that no funeral be held in her honor, a wish that my family rigorously respects.
Lost in meaningless mourning, I ask my grandfather to help me replace the furniture in the house as it was at the time of her death for the duration of a filmed performance. I try to photograph myself in her old clothes and in the armchair where she took her last breath.
This work represents my attempts to deal with grief, objects and emotional value through performative gestures and self-defined rituals in the absence of institutional rituals.
The result is an intimate exposure of vulnerability through experimentation, leading to the search for meaning through and beyond grief. The disappearance of the body in the form of a new object, to which we transfer affects and value, gives rise to a new cycle of conversation that allows us to renegotiate this bond we bear to the deceased and their objects, or rather, the bonds and affects the objects now carry within them.
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