They're All Dead Now
The Writer's Failure
This Again
My Characters Were Not Able to Come Fully to Life
Rejection, Transformation
Don't Go Out
Stare
Remember (I)
Throughout this time, as I sifted through the shreds, I was most affected by words and phrases to do with my homeland, Lebanon. I collected these shreds like talismans. I began to seek the precise correlation between the fictional world of my book with my own memory and experience.
Remember (II)
This book-sculpture continues exploring the truths behind my fiction. The novel's language fragments guided me to my collection of letters, photographs, and other memorabilia. Placing these deeply personal objects alongside the remnants of my novel led me to a purer understanding of my own experiences.
I made this towards the end of this project. The catalog box contains a fraction of the thousands of cards that belonged to my father, who was an Egyptologist and a linguist. The cards are now in disorder, their original function void and their meaning open to interpretation. The book I made describes my quest to find some link between my father's dismantled catalog and my shredded novel.
Catalog
Re/vision is made up of numerous finished book-objects and mini-installations, discards, curiosities, prints, notes, and tools of the trade. Here are some of the finished pieces. Click for full size.
When I first shredded the novel, I was struck by grief for all my characters. I made this graveyard, and every time I came across a name, I added it to the burial mound.
At the same time, I was preoccupied with the book being rejected and the gloomy worry that there might be no meaning to spending one's life on writing and art.
As time passed, I felt myself shifting away from these bitter emotions, and the shreds drew me back to the book's themes of war and displacement.
I also took breaks from those themes, even allowing myself some whimsy, a whole new way of being.
Dead Language
sample pages
sample page
If you would like more information about Re/vision, please email me at pwardbooks@gmail.com.
