When the audience walks into the space, there is a gift awaiting on the dirt platform.

In life, my presence is a temporal gift. Everyone has a different idea of who I am. And our time together may vary, your memory of me may vary. While one might hold on to my memory in time, for others I will be erased and forgotten, it’s just the way of life. I chose cotton candy because it translates the right way. The fragility and sensitivity are demonstrated in this performance.

A Gift from Me to You started after the lockdown of the pandemic in the fall of 2022. When I was asked to create objects for 20 people, gifts. I did a lot of thinking about a gift that would change during its transaction. I linked change and temporality, researching for a fragile gift that would fail the test of time. I wanted to evoke certain emotions for this gift that would die in the receiver’s ownership. It needed to be alive.

We need to understand the fragility of time, of life, to help us feel alive. This crisis has reminded us of how delicate and mortal this world is. As much as nature transforms,  

I was looking into making a gift that would disappear. Not ones that would last a lifetime, wrapped in paper and bows or paid to indulge in through food or entertainment, not the real ones. The gifts that come and go, leaving a trace in your memory.

I started with the cotton candy cast in a mold of my head. A sweet, delicate treat usually connected with childhood and its innocence. Then set a platform of soil as its background. It became part of the performance, allowing for the cotton candy to soak in and move in relation to the dripping rain. This relationship between cotton candy, soil, and rain functions like a being’s return to the earth, an inevitable end to life. 

Each of the gifts varies, like how each person holds their own perception of me. None of the gifts are exactly who I am, but I am all of these faces. Positioned in the center, I contain my whole self.

Our memories of each other are not forever. I am only experience, a passerby. I may be more lasting for some than others. 

One of me lays before you

A multiple of my face in an oddly flesh-toned pink

An imperfect copy, distorted memories, disfigured skin.

Each face slightly different from the next , holding imprints of the same features at varying magnitudes.

The silence breaks with rainfall.

Pitter patter,

pitter patter.

Each drop digs new paths in the face.

Each drop sinks and red decay flows out

This rain is gentle, this rain is loud

fills all the silence up in the room as you watch the face before you wash away.

The softness of cheekbones, nose-tips, eyelids, lips quietly erode into pungent red drips.

like acid on skin

fireworks in reverse.

In the center, raindrops don’t sink in, they run down my skin and drain into the soil surrounding me.

My body moves to a rhythm, gently rising and falling from every inhale and exhale, greeting each raindrops that meets my skin.

In time, faces have deteriorated to

An unpredicted factor to the once full, soft face that rested before you.