We Collect Answer 2022
We Collect Answers explored themes of language and painting, poetics, translation, religion, ritual and exchange. The exhibition consisted of a body of paintings that surrounded a ritual of exchange. Visitors were invited to offer a meaningful object in exchange for the ceramic rocks which were both pieces of a painting and pieces of a poem. Volunteer performers sat in the gallery space at the site of exchange to oversee and guide participants through the ritual. Each painting in the space was a translation of a poetic fragment that had been collected from previous participants in previous rituals. The exchange and installation of painted works paralleled one another to construct a space of conversation between artist and viewers. The fragments of poem disseminated amongst the exchanged rocks act themselves as translation of meaning both between painting and language, as well as between artist, viewers, strangers, and friends. Meaningful objects collected from the offerings made by participants remain in the care of the artist and continue to be used towards future and ever expanding translations.
Fragment of writing from the exhibition text:
We collect answers when we can. Ways to say what we really mean. What I really mean to say is that I’m looking for all of the same things that you’re looking for. What I really mean to say is that I continue to hope we might be able to genuinely understand one another. What I mean is to propose the idea that we are not really alone, after all. The story begins with genuine hands building moments of hopeful words. This is the story beginning with empty earth void of sounds and words and thoughts and love. I’m imagining the path that we take
It starts in between the start
It ends here, like always.
This is the story, this is where you find yourself now. A hungry person built stones out of clay and made a story to tell you. How much of this labour means that you are saved.
This is the story. The labor that an ocean might have spent was met with palms instead, a genuine sincerity engraved consonants and vowels to be held inside of hands.
This is the story.
You’ve known this the entire time; that there has been a knot in your throat for years and years. It never goes away, it never fades or settles, it never changes size, it never swells, it never shrinks. When you were young you compared it to a grade school diorama and found that it was the size of Jupiter. You know that it is not hollow. It never changes shape, except to sometimes feel immensely sharp, and at other times turn into a fluid pocket that estimates a violent burst. You’ve ignored it for long periods of time. You’ve tried to get it out, with compulsive fingers and miscellaneous paraphernalia, the string from your jacket zipper, the hook of a coat hanger, the glass from that shattered lightbulb. Sometimes you become violent with yourself not knowing how to manage the presence of it. Every time you try to explain what you mean the lump aches and asks you the questions that you really mean to ask. You ask to be understood, for answers, for love, for some time to understand, for the hope of a conversation.
That we might stay
and talk for a little
while.
I imagined that the lump could be everything. I told you all my guesses. This is the same lump that I have. It’s made out of everything, it’s made out of language, it’s made out of love, it’s made out of god, it’s made out of sincerity, it’s made out of clay, it’s made out of flesh. It’s made out of friends and family and lovers and strangers, it’s made out of everything that has ever been said, it’s made out of everything still unsaid.
It’s made maybe out of one single word one single answer that could be found and collected and known. That maybe could be found if we could only understand one another.
