curator, artist, writer
This mixed-media installation featured in the exhibition Convergences: Literary Art Exhibitions presented at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2011) and which toured to Limerick City Gallery, Ireland (2012). The exhibition, curated by Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, explored how ‘the reading and interpreting of literature is – in diverse ways – at the core of some of the most renowned contemporary art practices’.
The title of my work is taken from the writing of Kurt Vonnegut, and the elements of the installation paid homage to key themes in his work: the relationship between creation and destruction, the intertwining of science and fiction, and the dark comedy that results from the two and which plays a great part in defining the human condition.
I custom-made two jigsaws depicting the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban on one hand and the American bombing of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad on the other. I used the pieces to construct a large spiral galaxy form on the gallery wall, following astronomers’ discovery of a distant twin of our Milky Way. I placed the empty jigsaw boxes on plinths evoking the twin towers. Two spools of images, one of the moon landing, and the other of Manhattan skyscrapers, were viewable on stereoscope devices. A shelf displayed one of two special editions of a foundation stone of Western thinking – Plato’s Symposium – which were created for the exhibition.
