Altar In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

2025

size varies by installation

The title of this project references “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” by Richard Siken, from Crush, © 2006. 

In Siken’s work, desire and discomfort play off each other, intertwining and negating the other through his stylistic constructions and chosen language. I was drawn to the referenced poem around age 16, inspired by his refusal to provide a cemented perspective, especially at an age when clarity in emotion is hard to embody. The eventual creation of this body of work, Altars In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, became a way to respond back to Siken- to thank him for the guidance his words provided me, but simultaneously create a speculative dialogue between our practices as queer people. In an interview with James Hall, Siken made a remark about his ability to hold contradictions that I came back to when beginning this project. The resulting sculpture features a line from this interview on the wall-mounted textile.

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking “I am falling to the floor crying” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it—you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”

When thinking about the relationships between print, photo, and sculpture, I envisioned myself moving through imagery and perspectives in the same manner Siken moves through language. Truth becomes more a matter of perception and given acceptance of such in the moment. Is a photo an accurate depiction? What about when it is translated through a mesh screen and ink? What about when it becomes three dimensional? Could I combine the artificial/organic, the honest/dishonest, and imbue it all with a light sense of the ridiculous?