A Setting

For “A Setting” (2020), I collaborated with writer/political activist Jason Schwartz to create an immersive installation using textiles. We created diaphanous horizontal bars that extend from wall to wall. These strips of color are staggered so that from the front view they appear as a gradient of nearly immaterial, warm colors. Hushed tones drift in and out of edited field recordings of the turning of the day. We created a room inspired by the sense of pause, grief, reflection, and care that arrives with the day’s end. The time of sunset took on new significance in 2020. It marked the end of another day during the pandemic and uprisings in New York. The NY landscape was immersed with information, sirens, warnings, fireworks, and uncertainty on one hand, and on the other, a sense that something was on the way, through gatherings, protests, marches, and vigils. The end of day at times marked the change of another risky shift for weary ‘essential workers,’ or a time to set down daily work and gather in the streets to mourn or cry out for change, or a time to seek out the few loved ones we depend upon for closeness and affection in these moments of unknowns. The end of day marked a shift, and in that transition, we are reminded that we are shifting.