What happens when someone who has had a transformative experience in life come into contact with someone who has remained where they were? What happens when the one that was like you is now an other and comes back? Returning after having gotten away is a prescient consideration for migrants. It is also a consideration for anyone who has faced a life changing challenge that has changed their raison d'etre. Chair number 12 is made of the same materials as chair number 13, but they are entirely different. The violence of the trauma of leaving that has created chair number 13 is visible in the spikes of the broken limbs emanating from the figure. What struck me about refugees who had had particular traumatic histories is that they are difficult to approach, this chair's protruding spikes resulting from the trauma of remaking itself is an articulation of this unapproachability. Where there is contact between the two chairs change, damage, or transformation occurs. The work remains open, while chair number 13 is loud I find that chair number 12 had achieved an incredible articulation. I feel it is in shock as it's companion returns. I hope that it becomes impossible to judge which state is better, or which is better off. I think there is a profound horror in the way we have to live out lives moving on, never to return to where we were.
There is a kind of help sought by the returning chair that cannot be given by the chair that remained. In fact returning to the site of the chair that remained just makes everything worse in a way, makes the change massively clearer. The returning chair has changed so utterly there is a way back in form, but not really in practice.
- Subject Matter: Sculpture from found object