Installation of One Sheet for Each Day Since, 2017.
One Sheet for Each Day Since is a photographic, collecting performance piece, documenting the days since I was molested as a child. It has been approximately 6,000 days, and for each day I am collecting one bed sheet. The mountain of bed sheets and the corresponding photographs are a metaphor for the trauma I and many others have faced, and by adding to this obsessive collection each and every day is representative of my continued survival. Childhood sexual abuse is a pandemic on today’s society, and my goal is to open up the conversation about this issue by creating visual means of understanding the impact such violence has on an individual.
This project seems bleak, but I argue that it brings awareness to the emotional toil of trauma and abuse. We almost always want to hear a happy ending, that the person survives and is happy, and that the hurt doesn’t effect them anymore... but that’s not how healing works. Eventually, this project will end, when I finally feel at peace with my past. In the meantime, I will keep collecting, and when the day comes to stop, it will be a joyful one.
Currently, I am playing catch-up; I need to collect 16 years worth of sheets, or approximately 6,215, and counting (as of April 2018.)
This project has been funded in part by the Weisman Foundation at Columbia College Chicago.
One Sheet for Each Day Since has now given life to a new project, Stitched in Silence, which you can learn about here.
Feel free to check back with this page to see updates on the project and installation.
Installation at the Weisman Winners Exhibition at Arcade Gallery, Chicago, IL. 2018.
Installation View for PERSIST at MANA Contemporary in Chicago, IL. 2017.
For this rendition I created a bedroom space that the sheets occupied. On the exterior walls, the analog of the sheets were displayed. In the interior, the sheets were stacked at the head of the bed but not upon it, symbolizing an altar for an unmentioned but easily assumed sacrifice.
Installation of One Sheet for Each Day Since, 2016.
For this particular installation I created a maze out of over 200 sheets for my viewer to navigate through.
