Excerpts from booklet:

The inside and the outside of the circle reinforces the duality of living authentically but also feeling safe. I created a line that is pretty clear between the two. Or am I holding this space of in-betweeness? Can I hold the in-betweeness?
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The path feels like a scar in the ground. Is processing my conditioning and internalized ideals (and how I have fallen short of them) an opening, unearthing of the pain?

It’s all to be healed in a few months. Will there be any trace of it later?

A scar as a desire path.
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Two parts of the lot. Two parts of the book. Two parts of me: the authentic feelings and the packaging of them.

I’m trying to reconcile that they can exist together as one whole and both parts can be seen. That there is a level of transparency or acknowledgement that there is this constant negotiation within me.

Negotiation.

With the land, the sun, the space, my personhood, what I eat, and how much I walk.

The erosion of the conditioning that has kept me feeling restricted while part of the lot is literally eroding under my feet.

This feels like a reconciliation between me still holding on to the idea of the path (other’s acceptance of me, fitting other’s expectations) and my acceptance of myself. They’re not the same and do not have to be.

All these parts of me can exist in one being, because they do.

2019
Cement, yard flags, empty lot, 160 hours of walking in circle, vinyl lettering, spiral bound double-side booklet

Statement:

This past July, I spent the month walking in the same path- a circle/loop that I created in the ground- from 9-5, Monday-Friday in an empty residential lot in Springfield, Illinois. The circle represented a cultural expectation; a right way of being. The work challenged acceptability, various binaries, and my own physicality. By the end of the month, there was a clear, circular rut deep in the ground of the empty lot.

This in Remembrance of Me is an installation that holds the questions that came from my summer work. Are you caught (stuck?) in any restrictive cycles of thinking? How does it show up in your life? Is it sustainable for you? How much of yourself do you sacrifice for others?

Many of the social expectations that I’ve internalized as “right” have come from the church. The small, rural, Freewill Baptist church I grew up in housed an altar that read, “THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.” The broken body and blood of Christ (paper thin communion wafers & Great Value™ grape juice) could be found there to remind us how much God sacrificed for us and how we should do the same but would always fall short. As much as I’ve been conditioned to think about the body of Christ, I’ve also learned to obsess over my own. My size, my presence, and the space I take up has never been the right amount.

Throughout this process, I kept thinking over and over, “am I doing enough?” Shouldn’t my body be losing weight with the amount of steps (~30,000) I was making every day in that circle? Shouldn’t the path be deeper in the ground by now? Those are the ways I would prove to others how hard I worked during the month of walking. The insecurity about others’ perception of me was still overpowering my own work in a lot of ways. This is why I’m consciously choosing not to show “proof” (videos, photos, artifacts) of what happened this summer. My experience, this writing, and this altar is my proof.

This altar is for me. How I’ve broken my body, but what I’ve given to myself: time and space for acceptance.