Diaspora and Home

Glass, wood, fabric, paint, metal, plastic, light and electrical circuitry

6 x 10 x 8(H) feet

 What happens when disaster and acts of war affect what we consider home? What does home mean for us? What results when the safety of this environment is threatened? Changes in the world affect this sacred space for so many of us today. Families and individuals have witnessed and survived displacement and hardship in the current changing global conditions. This piece is a tribute to their survival and their loss of which they never speak. Today, as yesterday, as tomorrow.

This bullet-laden chandelier is a time-based spatial experience presented in an arcade-like setting. The interactive kinetic piece includes an audio component as a sensory-based experience. Entering the darkened space triggers the chandelier loaded with small metal and large hollow glass bullets, to suddenly illuminate and advance on the viewer at a steady, measured pace, only to suddenly shudder to a noisy halt, inches from the viewer. The chandelier then retreats back to its silent resting place only to repeat its cycle again. This continues until the viewer retires from the space, triggering the piece to shut down, and allowing silence and darkness to take over again. This piece was created through a period of conflict and war where safety, identity and the concept of home, ceased to exist.
The auditory section of this piece is created by the woven and fragmented rhythmic sounds of the moving glass and metal bullets against each other. This is reminiscent of passages of John Cage’s sound compositions known for their eerie commentary on social conventions.

Yellow Peril Gallery, curators V. Souvannasane, R. Stack, NY

Photo credit: Tom Powell Imaging