WATER SHAPES STATEMENT

In 2016 I began traveling to Berlin to meet with displaced people from all over the world. I always started the conversation by asking where they came from and the route they traveled. The majority had come through Greece on their way to Northern Europe. I traveled to Athens to meet with individuals and organizations involved in refugee resettlement to begin to understand this portion of their journey: the arduous water crossing, the inability to travel freely, and the excruciating tedium and powerlessness of waiting that was often part of their experience of migration.

In early 2020, as Covid-19 emerged, with a planned trip to Greece now looking unlikely, I left New York to be with my father who is in his late eighties and lives alone on Martha’s Vineyard.

I created an ad hoc studio so that I could work while we sheltered in place, and also worked outside when the weather allowed. I used these temporary spaces as a laboratory, exploring new ways of working, new materials and media. As I had planned to do in Greece, I began experimenting with installations at the water’s edge. Thinking of the ways a person’s identity can feel divided when they are forced to relocate, I cut twelve-inch plywood squares into geometric forms that could recombine to create an infinite number of compositions, and collectively make a whole – the self we carry with us wherever we are.