Crying Portraits
Crying Portraits
Death Be Kind—Melbourne, Australia
September 4 - 26, 2010
This installation grew out of investigations into how Victorian women gave presence to absence through domestic handcrafts and the ritual of wearing black during long periods of isolation in the home. The fugitive dyes used in mourning dresses ran color and often stained women's bodies, transferring the symbol of the absent loved one from the dress to the body. I made a Victorian mourning dress out of crepe paper and cried on it to release its ink and explore how the dress marks the body and the body marks the dress.
I embroidered several verses of an American folk song in white floss on black crepe paper and dripped saline solution on the embroideries to mimic my tears, causing the black ink of the paper to "erase" the white floss.
I recorded my voice humming the embroidered folk song and hid the recording inside an empty wood box which the viewer had to open in order to hear. Placing their hands on the box, they could feel the vibration of my voice resonating in the box, giving presence to absence.
Photos by Matthew Stanton