That Day, We Looked Happy

A transparent woven "prison cell" with black silk fabric suspended inside.

A shelf with family photos on fused glass in the distance on a grey wall, in the foreground a mesh woven "prison cell" with an open door, connected with thread to an American flag dyed black and draped over a coffin-like armature.

A photograph, torn down the middle, of the artist's father at an unknown gravesite. The photo is on amber fused glass, with lead solder.

Close-up image of the artist as pallbearer, on red white and black fused glass, against a grey wall.

A woven mesh "prison cell" with fragments of writing, correspondence and other documents screenprinted on the surface. There is door-like opening that connects to a dyed-black American Flag over a coffin-like structure.

A shelf with family photos on fused glass in the distance, with the texture of a woven mesh sculpture in the foreground.

A shelf with family photos on fused glass against a grey brick wall. The photos are broken into fragments and melted back together.

A detail image of family photogaphs on fused glass, with a shard of broken wire-reinforced glass.

An american flag, dyed black, cut into strips and re-woven, over a coffin-like armature.

That Day, We Looked Happy

Five Myles, Brooklyn, April 24 – May 30, 2021

Ten years ago my father passed away in prison. My family was not given the opportunity to visit him as his health declined. The interruption of the grieving process caused by the carceral system amplified other losses that came before his incarceration, flanked by intergenerational trauma and family secrets. For years afterward, I felt like there was no ritual that could hold this complex grief.

That Day, We Looked Happy is an immersive installation that envisions artistic labor as a vehicle for transforming loss that exceeds our limits. It draws from an archive of photos and documents I inherited after my father’s death. At the center of the installation is a hand-woven enclosure built around the footprint of a 6ft x 8ft prison cell. The translucent linen and wool mesh is printed with fragments of correspondence and other documents that fade in and out of legibility. Along the walls of the gallery hangs a collection of family photos, broken and reconfigured on fused-glass with extreme heat.

Art making became a way to process grief through the body. The aching shoulders from hours spent on the loom, the cuts from handling sharp glass, the way the materials engaged and resisted my touch, gave me a place to contain the tension between absence and excess. At a moment of widespread loss, I hope this work can help us imagine new possibilities for personal and collective healing – possibilities that hold space for complex, and interrupted, experiences of grief.

This exhibition was supported, in part, by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

[Click for Video] Artist Talk with Chloe Hayward, May 20, 2021

Press

Holland Cotter, The New York Times, “5 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now,” May 20, 2021.

Dessane Lopez Cassell and Cassie Packard, Hyperallergic, “Your Concise New York Art Guide for May 2021,” May, 04, 2021.