On September 11, 2001, my studio home situated at 125 Cedar suffered extreme damage due to the collapse of the Towers. And for twenty years, I fully dedicated myself to completing the Archive of Dust which is a series of works and installations aiming at transforming the destruction of my work into new works of art together with the 100 hours of footage I shot from the windows of my studio home thanks to a permit the police gave to access the building for 8 months.
DUST is the subject matter of my presentation at LOT-EK, a remembrance on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I have tried to replicate what I did 25 years ago collecting garbage around my home in The East Village and transforming those rejected items into new works of art.
During our lifetimes we all face traumas of varying degrees, from which we must recover to keep living. Sometimes these result from forces of nature; more often, they stem from the actions of others. Art serves as a form of working through fate and because of this, reparation is of particular importance to me. I view mending as a metaphor for healing. Mending pieces that have become damaged, intentionally or not, is an essential facet of my artmaking.
Anonymous, repetitive acts of creation and repair --which characterize traditional domestic and artisanal labor -- are central to my artworks. I seek to shed light on the hidden histories of functional objects and modes of facture; my artworks recuperate and investigate forms and practices that are often assumed to solely perform utilitarian roles in society.