Matter, 2019

The term “matter” relates here to dual definitions. The first: the physical substance occupying space and possessing rest mass. The second: to be of importance, or significance. Ephemeral materials including flower petals, cabbage, mowed grass— fallen bodies that are traces of another action or force— soak into curled and folded blank pieces of paper. When these parcels are rotting in abstracted patterns of line, lines of their own language, what is left are stains of time. With cabbage, I think of my mother in the garden, and my Slovak heritage. As that presence rots, so too does the image of my mother. Or my grandfather’s knowledge of my family’s history dating generations back, rotting. Matter dissolves and disintegrates, and our communication is left as recorded story.