Studio notes

I keep coming back
To Air.

The only thing
that never leaves us.
Always there.
Inside the body.
Outside it.
Between people.

I keep coming back to the same action
A precise gesture,
A deliberate gesture…

Suturing.

The lost,
the broken,
the intangible.

I suture through nothing
the knot tightens
around absence...

I pull the thread tight.
It’s meant to close wounds.
Bring edges together.
Help healing.

Except there is no body here.
No flesh.
No skin.

Only Air.

Lately Air feels heavy.
Charged.
It’s carrying too much.
The world feels wrong.
Unstable.

Something has shifted and we’re pretending it hasn’t…

How do I respond to that?

I contine suturing
I understand it...

It’s precise.
It’s focused.

It insists that my body slow down
The slow steady movement of the hand.
And the thread follows….

How can Air be held?
Intangible, transient, formless, fractured
Air….

The futility of this gesture..

But somehow stopping feels worse.
I keep going.
I continue to suture those open bloody wounds…
Passing…
Holding nothing.
The action repeats.
Again and again.

Still, I continue.

There’s something calming in the repetition.
Almost meditative.
My mind is quiet while my hands keep moving.
As if my body is processing
something my mind can’t...

I think about everything that feels broken...

Personally.
Globally.
Collectively...
Violence.
Genocide.
Displacement...

I feel small.
Inadequate…

What does it look like when you want to mend something
but don’t know how?

When the magnitude of damage is far far beyond you?

But I do it anyway…

With a history that remains in the body.
An inherited identity
personal conscience...
It doesn’t change
The air doesn’t change.

Some wounds don’t close….

A quiet protest.
A refusal to look away.
No final gesture.
Just an accumulation of effort.
The air still remains unsettled.
Unfixed.

I can’t correct that.
But I can acknowledge it.
Mark it.
Stay with it.
Stitch by stitch.

Body
Thread.
Breath….