The Gift

A large-scale wall installation in steel, hand-burnt silk, and archival photography. A custom steel bow framework — monumental in scale at 44 x 75 inches — is draped with red silk that has been burnt along its edges, the fabric flowing from the armature in varying states of dissolution. At the center, a small antique frame holds a photograph of a marble Medusa head, the classical image suspended within the wreckage of the larger structure.
The work draws on the Medusa myth as a lens for examining transformation through trauma — the bow invoking gift-giving while the deteriorating silk complicates what is actually being offered. Beauty and destruction occupy the same form here, neither canceling the other out. The piece rewards sustained looking: what reads as lush and abundant from a distance reveals itself, up close, as something in the process of coming undone.