Collection of the Things We Leave Behind

On display at Phillips Exeter Academy in Spring of 2021.

Just to be clear

I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. 

I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.”

-Andrea Gibson

The theme of this work is: Collection of the Things We Leave Behind. The medias that most influenced this work are the video game Sayonara Wild Hearts, Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, and the poetry of Andrea Gibson. I want this work to express queer self-actualisation and acceptance of oneself. The most profound tenet that my time at PEA has imparted upon me is to approach self-actualisation with a growth mindset, in a sort of transcendentalist genderful butterfly-hatching-from-cocoon way. Do we shatter our past Selves to kintsugi (金継ぎ) our scattered shards back together with gold inlay? Does beautification of one’s perception of Self require heartbreak? 

I said to the sun

tell me about the Big Bang

The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'

-Andrea Gibson

The many layers of plexiglass come together so when light passes through them, the full spectrum from warm pastel pink to cool baby blue of the background refracts onto the foreground. The shattered elements - tape cassettes, a flip phone, and pieces of heart candy - mount up to the earthly figure, emulating Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. In Sayonara Wild Hearts, this figure is represented by the tarot card the Fool. I call her Joy, and she’s been rent through, her heart in as many pieces as the candy dust surrounding her. She gasps, taking in her dying breath, and tiny shards embed themselves in her lungs. The heavenly figure is Seraphiel, of the heavens and the Platonic ideals. It’s Joy, transcended, back to save her younger self, not by reviving her earthly form, but by freeing her spirit from the imperfect physical form. We leave behind the technology we once were so attached to, tape cassettes and feature phones, like we leave behind our physical forms. Did we ever love them? Or did we just get comfortable with them? We are not bodies, we are souls. The seat, hewn from rough, unsanded and unpainted wood haphazardly screwed together, represents this imperfect physical, the crude and sharp form which we transcend.

Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter.

-Yoda