Conceptual portrait
The work is a conceptual portrait of a relationship rather than an actual person. I choose not to show a picture of me or Cal or really any physical piece of our bodies, and only allowed love letters as the only material to relay our emotional connection and specific times and meaningful moments in my life. The portraits don’t use our physical appearance, but does show how our relationship exists through written traces.
What is the rule/system?
I was only allowed to use letters from our two-year relationship. I wasn’t allowed to have an emotional bias about what was selected and had to use all the letters he had given me. Two different scanned pages represented the two years. There is no timeline or chronological order. The layout can’t be pre-planned, I have to just layer it on in whatever way feels right in the moment.
How does my collection allow the viewer to see differnetly?
It allows the viewer to understand our relationship through objects instead of physical appearances/bodies, and allows the viewer to see love in abundance instead of a standstill moment in time. The layout was chosen to show that memory isn’t linear, it isn’t a particular timeline line and allows the reader to see that love doesn’t have a clear beginning or end.
I originally intended to create a performative piece, which is what I ended up doing in my critique, but when. I went home, disaster struck, and I had accidentally dropped my flowers on the floor, and they broke. I think it would have been cool to rebuild it and possibly film the process, but I honestly didn’t have enough time, and I was also pretty upset about it for a while. I then was thinking of what else I could do that reflected the same sort of meaning, which, to me, our commitment and promises to each other have been shown through the letters that he has written to me. I feel like being able to read some of the letters really allows you to learn about my and Cal’s relationship and how he uses language to interact with me.
I first collected all my letters from my memory box and then went and scanned them all with Nathan’s help. I used two papers to then print out these two differently laid out scans, and then took a picture to upload to the blog. The picture isn’t as clear as it is in person 🙁
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