The Hope and Anchor.
After visiting my friends exhibition at the Thames-side Gallery, I cycled passed London’s flood defence and had a drink in The Hope and Anchor.
Work in progress, Cast Iron, Fall 2023. This Spring I will be making a series of sculptures combining cast metals and sewn workwear surfaces. The slogans and texts in this piece are all drawn from official labor rights signage, labor law posters, court cases and studies on labor law violations, labor protest picket signs, and handwritten historical letters responding to labor protests in the United States.
It was in Sesimbra, Portugal, October 7, 2023. I was there in Portugal presenting a movie about Syria before war, and it seemed a little paradise away from it all. I read about the tragedy happening in this moment in Israël a few minutes later, after shooting the pictures of this wonderland. These images will always have a very special taste for me. I look at them as a unreal slideshow, a suspended moment, before the announcement of a disaster for our humanity. A few minutes later, I saw this man running alone, as if he was running away, or running for help, was he a survivor? I thought we were all survivors.
À nos amies argentines dont le peuple vient de se vouer au culte de la tronçonneuse ; à nos amies palestiniennes qui implorent une justice qui ne viendra pas ; à nos amies israéliennes à qui leurs dirigeants préparent un avenir de terreur ; à nos amies ukrainiennes dont le présent est cruel et l’avenir plombé de nuages noirs ; à nos amies russes bâillonnées ; à nos amies d’Iran et d’ailleurs qui affrontent à mains nues l’obscurantisme armé ; à toutes nos amies qui résistent à l’hubris de puissants bouffis d’orgueil et vautrés dans le business ; à celles qui combattent les passions tristes de leurs concitoyens abreuvés de mensonges; aux humains qui continuent de croire que chacun a droit à une vie digne et aux humains qui parfois désespèrent du genre humain – en ce moment il y a de quoi – je dédie trois photos extraites de vieilles archives.
Find a corner on the floor and start building a house of threads.
Think about what it would be like to make a house of threads, sit with the idea for a while, think about the (im)possibilities.
Construct a house from memory, an old home, a part of a home, an imagined home or any other place that comes to mind.
