apple rosary forgiveness ritual, 2020

I performed this piece in January 2020 at UC Santa Barbara’s Glassbox Gallery. It is a ritual of self-forgiveness. I built an enlarged rosary (made up of apples, dry spaghetti, and teen magazines from my youth) as a frame around a billboard vinyl, scribbling the word ‘forgiven’ over and over until I had a striped bed sheet pattern and the billboard became a bed. The soundtrack was my own voice repeating “Je suis desolée, s’il te plait pardonne-moi, je t’aime, merci” (I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you, thank you). At the end, I invited the audience members to eat the half-eaten apples. VHS video recording and digital transfer by Serene Blumenthal.

afterlife conversation, 2019

My grandfather Gui Marcel Ignon was born in France in 1897. He fought for the French in World War I, spent time as a German POW, and became a post-Surrealist painter and art teacher in Ojai, California. He died when my father was 16, but I have often imagined what it would be like to talk to him. I made this video with a conversation with him in mind, in an abstract future afterlife space wherein I could ask him questions I’ve long pondered about his life, his work, and intergenerational legacies.