Twenty-Nine Tragedies

26th August - 17th December 2023 / Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO / Collaboration with Phillip Andrew Lewis

Powder-coated Aluminium, kite hardware, Rip-stock nylon

Twenty-Nine Tragedies is an unfolding sequence of site-specific outdoor sculptures that are installed in existing trees at art institutions. A series of multi-colored diamond kites appear to be crashed and trapped in trees, their forms crumpled or pierced by the impact and their tails animated by the weather, tangling over time within the branches.

A viewer coming across this work is rewarded for paying attention and looking up. This piece, discovered rather than pointed at, invites an audience to consider themselves carefully attuned to the material remains of life’s idiosyncrasies. The kites read as a colorful aftermath of an implied celebratory event. A kite festival gone wrong. A family afternoon that ended in tears. A sudden gust of wind that broke the string tethering the kite its owner.