I love you when you cry, 2017

Drew Fine Arts Center, St. Paul, MN, USA 

A mullti-media piece with three components: a large format print, a video, and an experiential self-guided walk. Shown on April of 2017 at Drew Fine Arts Center, Hamline University, MN.

While western cultures see the ghosts as lost spirits of those who passed away, in some eastern cultures they are demons that live in a parallel universe. But what if the ghost is something that our existence in the world generates? The ghost, to me, is the manifestation of our past selves in the present as if the past is an almost invisible being that follows us around. The future could also be a ghost; it could be a materialization of our fear of the unknown.

In this piece, I Love You When You Cry, the ghost repeats the same line. It is a way of realizing how some emotions are a result of things we tell ourselves repeatedly. This only means that our sorrows are self-inflicted. The versus written throughout the pieces are from the poem I Do Love You by Arabic poet Nizar Qabbani.

The large format print(s) and video

The self guided walk.

Presented in the form of a public intervention, I love you when you cry builds a conceptual narrative derived from experiences of exclusion, isolation, and the disappearance of identity. In an attempt to criticize the human desire to be witnessed mixed with self-inflicted misery, this piece questions the experience of “ghosting”: to become deeply immersed in one’s sorrows that they become invisible to others.

Five interventions were placed in various locations around the building. To explore them, the audience had to follow a map. Once at a location, they would read the didactics placed on the wall which asked them about their memories.