Silence becomes tender, 2019
Site specific installation
Wood, drywall, Benjamin Moore Ultra 5000 Spec house paint, and pencil crayon.
A wall is built to enclose the nook between lockers 4453 and 4452.
Spectators participate in an experience. Imagination is encouraged.
Silence becomes tender confines the spectator in an enclosed space between lockers 4451 and 4453 on the fourth floor hallway. The text derives from a soft angst towards the pressures of an institutional space and the system it enforces on its participants. Institutions such as the school have a lot of influence on how we go about in the day to day. Often times I find myself stuck with deadlines overlapping with another, unable to finish projects in the capacity or quality they could’ve been presented. Having a break without a break, having to make work to receive a final grade, etc. I find myself frustrated at the system but having to oblige to the system. Rather than implying angst against the institution, the text invites the spectator to hypothetically move away from these confines and find comfort in their own silence. The work subtly acknowledges these aspects of the institution by providing a space for its participants to remove themselves within it. Ironically, the text is in a form of an instruction as it guides the spectators how to imagine within the space. It is in itself its own institution.
The structure is built out of wood and drywall then painted with Benjamin Moore’s Ultra 5000 Spec Interior Flat paint, the same paint used to on the walls of OCAD University. It is important I used the same paint because the built walls are to be read as an extension to the OCAD walls. It is a site specific work that refers back to Robert Serra’s Tilted Arc. It cannot be removed from the nook between lockers 4451 and 4453. The scale and size is determined by its site. It is conceptually activated only on the site. When it is to be de-installed, the work will not exist elsewhere.