Silent, Silence, Silenced

Scroll to view exhibition images followed by process.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Abaya but Didn't Know Who to Ask
2017
Performance

At the opening event at Atlantic Works Gallery, Middle Eastern artists and scholars Wafaa Alonazi, Amal Allkalifa and Amana Alabri performed “Everything You Might Have Wanted to Know About the Abaya but Didn’t Know Who to Ask.”

Gallery view
2017

Atlantic Works Gallery, Easy Boston


View 3D gallery tour here.


The installation re-mythologizes noisy historical and contemporary events, bringing together the cannonballs and tablets I had cast at a BAU residency in Otranto, Italy, two years earlier. New works include sculptural triptychs and monoprints made in the printshop during a 2017 Mass MoCA residency, which represent deliberate subtraction of sound and actions of self-censorship.  Invited guest artists included Christine Coënon, French sound artist and filmmaker living in Paris; and Boston-based artist John Wilkinson, who fabricated a plexiglass mobile, “The Blue Bolt.”

Gallery view with 'Meme' photo booth participant
2017

Gallery-goers take pictures in a delineated photo booth area. People choose a word that answers: “What silences you?” They then select either a gold or black hood to pull over their head. The intention was to feel the silencing; perhaps a lack of individuality as well.

Cannonball Skins on pedestals and brass bullet casings
2017

The installation impact slides between sound made visible and the unquiet silent aftershock of decapitated explosives. The exhibited Cannonball Skins are casts of the weapons fired from galley ships during the 1480 Ottoman Invasion of Italy.

Cannonball Skins, detail
2017

The Cannonball Skins capture the essence of those weapons: the layer of silence that resides between violence and its aftermath, between life and death, between perpetrator and victim, between cultures and borders, between our earth and the dome of heaven, between stone and air.

Storia (History) Cannonball Skin
2017
12 in diameter

Spent bullet casings scatter around the Cannonball Skins, bringing home the horror of invasion, war, and mass shootings, with a deliberate subtraction of sound.

Gallery adjustments
2018

Boston East Gallery

Cannonball Skins, Bullet Casings and Hooded by Terrorism triptych in background
2017

Each Cannonball Skin is marked with a word relating to the initial act of violence. Time. Space. History. Movement. Existential Questions. Fear of Sons. Conflict.

Silenced by Terrorism. triptych
2017
Fabric over sculpture
13x10x10 inches ea.

A few friends suggested black hooded heads were politically incorrect. I listened and began to witness my own silencing. Political Correctness does has silencing effect. Nonetheless, I continued. As a human being in 2017, this is what is going on, this is what I saw, this is what I associated during the artistic process.

Silenced by the Hood
2017
Monotype, ink on archival paper
22x15 inches ea.

A hood over a human head identifies that person as a silenced, single member of an oppressed group.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Abaya but Didn't Know Who to Ask
2017
Performance

At the opening event at Atlantic Works Gallery, Middle Eastern artists and scholars Wafaa Alonazi, Amal Allkalifa and Amana Alabri performed “Everything You Might Have Wanted to Know About the Abaya but Didn’t Know Who to Ask.”

Q&A session at gallery opening
2017
Performance

The three women circulated after the performance and answered questions about the silencing--or not--effect of their abaya.

Female Abduction Box
2017
Silk fabric, chain and leather handle
24x15.5x5 inches

During the 13-month occupation of Otranto, Italy, the Ottomans raped, killed and kidnapped Italian women, taking many to harems in Turkey.

Female Abduction Box
2017
War Chronicle Tablets, seashells, sea glass, pins, sand
24x15.5x5 inches

I interpreted those abductions within a lineage of war crimes, on-the-job-harassment, domestic violence, and purposeful silencing of women by their families, men and other women. Ironically, the installation went up the same month Harvey Weinstein was arrested.

Female Abduction Box
2017
War Chronicle Tablets, seashells, sea glass, pins, sand

Interior view, detail


Inside the box, the War Chronicle Tablets nestle next to objects from the Mediterranean Sea.

Female Abduction Box
2017
War Chronicle Tablets, paper, plaster, paint, pearl pins
5x9 inches ea.

Interior view


Like the Cannonball Skins, the narrative tablets inside the Female Abduction Box were created on the surface of Ottoman cannonballs.

Female Abduction Box
2017
War Chronicle Tablet on silk with chain and leather

Interior view, underside of lid.

Silenced by Capitalism
2017
Fabric over sculpture
13x10x10 inches ea.

There are modes-of-being that cause us to remain or appreciate the silent, whether we have been made speechless by regime, consumerism, prestige, or awe. 

Gallery view with Blue Bolt mobile
2017
Plexiglas
120x24 inches

Mobile made by John Wilkinson.


Lightning is one of the noisiest natural phenomena on earth, yet here we have done the impossible: made it silent.

“Once Upon a Time Otranto”
2017
Audio: Christine Coënon (French artist)

Flocks of starlings. The sea, The cathedral. Voices and sounds from a seaside town located way, way down at the sole of the heel of Italy's boot. Otranto is the installation's geographic locus and material source, never silent, sometimes quiet.

Process images