“For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure…”- Rainer Maria Rilke, The First Elegy
Current Project Statement
Kenosis is a project utilizing the erasure, excision and reconfiguration of the New York Times to elicit a sacred experience of the everyday. Kenosis is an ancient Greek word for emptiness or an emptying. By physically removing content, I make space for what has been forgotten, suppressed and ignored in print as well as for what is lost in the translation of experience into words. The residue of content calls to mind Asian and Middle Eastern commemorative traditions of paper cutting and also the preservation of ancient parchment fragments. The acidic nature of newspaper and its rapid shift in color aids the association of time passing, creating a tension between decomposition, ornamentation and the aggressive order of the grid. Kenosis functions as a ritualistic act of beauty to mend the deficits of human ingenuity.
Current Project Statement
Kenosis is a project utilizing the erasure, excision and reconfiguration of the New York Times to elicit a sacred experience of the everyday. Kenosis is an ancient Greek word for emptiness or an emptying. By physically removing content, I make space for what has been forgotten, suppressed and ignored in print as well as for what is lost in the translation of experience into words. The residue of content calls to mind Asian and Middle Eastern commemorative traditions of paper cutting and also the preservation of ancient parchment fragments. The acidic nature of newspaper and its rapid shift in color aids the association of time passing, creating a tension between decomposition, ornamentation and the aggressive order of the grid. Kenosis functions as a ritualistic act of beauty to mend the deficits of human ingenuity.
