In Another Requiem, garments worn on my body were obsessively cut with scissors for hours. During the hours of cutting, the garments were shredded into unrecognizable pigments to be merely used for an installation of sorts. It was my attempt to visualize the hours of rituals used to remember the past and present, beckoning myself to reconcile my past through this transformative act. Another Requiem demonstrates a mourning of loss which manifests in the destruction of worn garments.

Performed in private, this notion of a personal ritual of mourning by cutting of garments was more essential than the end product of the destroyed garment. By the third day of the performance, I piled the cut garments into an installation in a room, hoping for my destruction to redeem itself.

Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia denotes an idea of innate violence and destructiveness as the essence of desire. In other words, this desire to regain or possess for the sake of gratification validates a rather destructive mourning process as a means to redeem something equivalent to what has been lost.


Vermont Studio Center
Johnson, VT