The past few weeks have been marked by protest, monuments being toppled around the world and the unrelenting death toll caused by COVID - 19. So many deaths have occured in hospitals surrounded by caring staff or, uniquely, in brutal circumstances on the streets at the hands of those whose duty it is to serve and protect. Some have died at home, in lonely and desparate circumstances. How are we to make sense of it all? Of any of it? I tried to reflect on this in the studio, continuing on from research into how to make absence present; or how to make material that which is no longer there, like a breath. I thought about my own research into how to make a memorial for the Troubles, and how to (as Donna Harraway would say) stay with that trouble by considering the past as well as the present. I am still here. Still present. I marked that presence by taking a breath and remembering someone as I exhaled, through a mixture of soap and paint. The bubbles which formed dropped onto paper, some floated into space and I held the paper up to catch them. Each left its mark on the paper, evidence of breathing. Of being present. Of thinking of those who are not.
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