Amulet/Death is a Sacred Nightmare
piecework
2023
Amulet (Death is a Sacred Nightmare) was a ritual to help me move through the days in which an important friend was actively dying and to begin to process my grief at her premature death. Tearing strips of bedsheets and hand-stitching them back together evolved from both emotional and physical necessity—this work was inspired by the disabling physical limitations that inhabit my body, and the need to piece my fragmented self back together. Working either in my bed or close to it, necessity created an enshrined space in which to move through the beginning stages of my grief. The days of her dying were a liminal realm that required the spaciousness of absolute simplicity. Everything that was unnecessary fell away. At times, a string of words would thread themselves through the layers of fabric and then become intentionally obscured. Because we were 2,000 miles apart, the work became a spell that folded space and brought me to her side. I was with her when the thread was cut…or maybe she was with me.