Time Based Work

This piece was an interview of my father. His recollection of his time responding to ground zero on September 11th are conversations that he only feels truly comfortable having with me, his daughter. The created visual of the work in my practice was representative of the actual search of information, and the physical search he did for over 30 days on the site.

I grew up with the silence of a tragedy. 

When my father was a first responder and survivor of September 11th, I was seven years old. The challenge in presenting a publicly felt pain is in separating a single story from the world’s publicized experience. Only through this separation am I able to fully realize my own, raw and uninfluenced memory.

Three days later, he came home.

In each piece, I am navigating the experience of memory, deconstruction, layers and language. I memorialized the first step of a blueprint drawing that wasn’t supposed to outlive the skyscraper it created. The repetition of written words became a woven shield, revealing and concealing the painting beneath. These specific words and phrases gained power in their abundance.

My father recently said, “I tried my best to shield it all from you, but you can’t hide things from children. You felt the pain through me as I held you”.