I tend to look at the ground when I walk. I see pathways riddled with cracks running deep into the road. And at times, when I walk without intention, the edge of unevenness presses against my feet, and I stumble over the leftovers of another year’s shifting.
In Daoist thinking, nothing exists without an opposite component. As I walk down my life’s path, I look back on the ghosts emerging. Every crack and mark on the way both exists and becomes. They are the end ripple of a wake and they are the spearhead of a rift. To witness this fractalization is to reflect upon myself and others around me, as we (and our interactions with others) simultaneously exist in eternity yet continuously begin to exist. And in turn, I’ve been chasing this kind of ephemera. Running after a sensation of both moving forward and living in memory.
My work reenacts the sedimentation of a new ground where I can manufacture the progression of time and it’s history. I primarily use dry mediums like conté, graphite powder, or charcoal powder to pave over a surface until the original media is no longer recognizable. If my paper is strong enough, I’ll use paint and ink. This process is physically intensive and layer focused, meant to condense the forerunners of unevenness. I make marks, both additive and subtractive to erode my even ground and raise its tactile edge. To make the body half-living, I tediously whittle away and fill up the crevices left behind. Over and over, I cover up the ridges of my personal precipice and make them again, so many times that there’s only a faint trace of what they once were. The position I place myself in often causes intense pain in my shoulders and back, but these intentionally long periods of repetition are an utmost necessity. The more I make way for its reoccurrence, the more I exist in extension to the piece. The memory of the labor and the consequences of it on my body serves as a tether. In tandem, we can take the disembodied perspective of the viewer and plunge them back into the footsteps left behind.
The process is the only certainty I have. Observation leads to an explorative act redone a hundred times over. It is a false archaeology. The sacrifice of premeditated finality allows for an unending reflection on the past. I am walking forwards while facing backwards, and the viewer must take my hand, looking for fossils already resurfacing.
