Suspended is the original title for the concept of this piece. The actualizatio, was a collaboration with artists Stephanie Lupu and Misty Deberry, entitled, Relier.

This installation transformed an office space into a warm, inviting kitchen set slightly at an angle towards the entrance. The moment captured is that of a woman washing the dishes in silence. No matter what the audience does, they leave little to no impression on the performer, who is lost in thought.

I used to watch my mother do the dishes this way for years, exhausted from working a dead end American job, forced to clean a perpetually dirty apartment in comparison to what she had in Haiti. She would listen to Edith Piaf those nights and I could feel the loss in our lives.

At the base of the sink are projections of scrolling poetry about the relationships between the artists and their mothers. The music emitted from the tape player is a digital slowing of a Piaff chanson played through an old cassette player. On the wall are projections of snowy days blending into hibiscus flowers much like the ones back home.

Promise

The fireflies always seemed to find us
Hidden in the brush, slingshots in hand,
Clinging to the mountain side
Or under a mango tree just before dinner.
They once found me
Cursing your grandfather
In the willows behind the house.
By their light,
I never forgave him,
But still made my way back home.

I was searching for summer smiles
When I met your father.
With eyes like little magnets
He danced over my body,
Suspending me by my own breaths,
Buoyant with the promise of our love.

You were the promise of our love,
With eyes like little magnets
And a firefly in your hand
You made your way into your grandfather’s arms,
Both of you silly with summer smiles.

: :

Flashing back the glow of street lamps
Hung in the languor of November,
The silver settles.
Between the cracks in the window pane,
It licks clean the corpses of fireflies,
Failed beacons of promise
For children searching for summer smiles.

Forced from the willows, forced from our home,
Built stone by stone for you my boy,
We took that flight.
We traveled so far, strait up and so high,
Climbing,
Only to settle for a shoebox,
For Niederman, a racist,
And his super,
Alcoholic and all.

How a dirty home breaks my spirit.
I make us into engines.
We scrub and scrub
Our fingerprints thin.
Backs bent,
We hummed to the shame
of one another.

I wanted to create a device that, by design, would make someone aware of their own sense of commitment. I was trying to explore the complexities of my commitments to my partner at the time. She would soon have my daughter and later be my wife.

This sculpture is suspended by the ceiling of a gallery by steal cables. The participant approaches the main element, which is a microphone. On the microphone the words “make a wish” is written. When they speak into the microphone, two heat lamps cast their energy on a block of ice suspended beneath the microphone.

As the block melts, it releases encapsulated pennies throughout the coarse of the night. Together with the water drops, the pennies fall into a metal dish which resonates upon impact. The dish is equipped with a contact mic and the sound is looped to create an indeterminate soundscape.

Participants end up choosing a penny near the edge of the block of ice and begin making wishes, putting forth the time and work necessary to make something powerful happen.

Stare is an autobiographical film that I had to make. It wrestles with an interrogation of masculinity in the form of the question, “Am I already that man or will she bring that man out from within me.”

This digital short weaves together two simple montage. One romanticizes the experience of watching an attractive young women walk out of a coffee shop, and the other a re-enactment of the speech my sister’s father gave me before he moved out. The two scenes are tied together by the viewer turning their gaze onto themselves. Their inner workings are represented by the internal mechanisms of a video camera.

It sheds light on how the experience of a thrice-broken home might affect my relationships with young women. It also brings up questions of guilt and blame between the son that listens to the speech and the mother that he, unfortunately, held responsible.