death of the hero
Materials: Zeroxed images, wood, unfired clay, paint, projected images, my father’s clothing, rope, grass, photographic images, and red fabric.
Dimensions: Overall, 30’ x 20’
The viewer enters through the font glass opening, covered with zeroxed images of a man.
The space is divided by a floor to ceiling wall of men’s clothing. The viewer walks through
the clothing and becomes part of a series of large scale projections and moves onto a wooden walkway.
On the walkway, is a myth. Below the walkway, are unfired clay sculptures and at the end is a box filled
with living grass. A photo sits on top of the grass.
Artist’s text: My father died on August 30th, 1989. After his death, I thought about his heroic presence
in my family and the heroism all of us expect of our fathers. When my father died, I asked myself what do I do now.
How can I identify with a culture which glorifies the heroic. Where is my hero.
Artist’s myth: The child of a blind man has a dream in which her father walks down the streets of a city.
Her fear begins when he falls into a deep hole. Putting aside her play things, she jumps in after him and the
two become lost together. Without his knowing, the child throws her shoes up toward the shy.
As they rise from the hole, they catch in the apron of a young woman. She lowers a rope down
to the man and the child and the two emerge from the hole. In gratitude, the man bestows upon
the woman his timepiece, upon the child his boots. The child, in the boots of her hero, walks away with her father.
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