at the very point where words fail us; (the old word foi, "faith")
Archival inkjet prints
2016
2016
I have been thinking about ritual, process, and relics.
At times I have seen my mother running rosary beads between her fingers. I know that a rosary can always be found underneath her pillow. For the past 25 years, the once bright baby blue rosary that has now faded to white, hangs from the rear view mirror in her car. I think back to a time when a medium told me that my grandmother is with my mother when she is lying in bed holding -- what the psychic interpreted as -- a string of pearls, but what I immediately identified as her rosary.
In preparation for the photograph of my mother in at the very point where words fail us; (the old word foi, "faith"), we learned how to make a rosary and collectively strung and knotted 300 rosaries over the period of a month. The labour and process involved in making the rosaries felt reminiscent of the meditative and repetitive practice of saying the rosary. These rosaries were draped over my mother’s neck leaving deep marks in her skin – there was heaviness, a weight literally on her shoulders, and not just the one I have put on her. The volume of rosaries was a way of visually speaking to abundance, but also as a means of obstructing my mother’s ability to speak and be heard – a binding of sorts.
I have been thinking about penance, atonement, and guilt.
I wrapped my hair around stones, secured it with string, and then they were loosely sewn together with needles left attached. These strings were then threaded between my teeth. The use of my hair references the body, the abject and loss. I think of this object as a personal, contemporary variation of the hair shirt -- a shirt made out of coarse animal hair, worn by those making penance or as a means of resisting temptation in the early ages of Christianity. What I atone for remains unsaid, but my skepticism is enough to generate the guilt that dwells.
At times I have seen my mother running rosary beads between her fingers. I know that a rosary can always be found underneath her pillow. For the past 25 years, the once bright baby blue rosary that has now faded to white, hangs from the rear view mirror in her car. I think back to a time when a medium told me that my grandmother is with my mother when she is lying in bed holding -- what the psychic interpreted as -- a string of pearls, but what I immediately identified as her rosary.
In preparation for the photograph of my mother in at the very point where words fail us; (the old word foi, "faith"), we learned how to make a rosary and collectively strung and knotted 300 rosaries over the period of a month. The labour and process involved in making the rosaries felt reminiscent of the meditative and repetitive practice of saying the rosary. These rosaries were draped over my mother’s neck leaving deep marks in her skin – there was heaviness, a weight literally on her shoulders, and not just the one I have put on her. The volume of rosaries was a way of visually speaking to abundance, but also as a means of obstructing my mother’s ability to speak and be heard – a binding of sorts.
I have been thinking about penance, atonement, and guilt.
I wrapped my hair around stones, secured it with string, and then they were loosely sewn together with needles left attached. These strings were then threaded between my teeth. The use of my hair references the body, the abject and loss. I think of this object as a personal, contemporary variation of the hair shirt -- a shirt made out of coarse animal hair, worn by those making penance or as a means of resisting temptation in the early ages of Christianity. What I atone for remains unsaid, but my skepticism is enough to generate the guilt that dwells.
Documentation by Daniel Ehrenworth
