Platitudes with Milk and no Sugar

2023, Video

Some things cannot be fixed, they can only be carried.

Exploring ideas around grief and loss, the broken cup is used as a way to understand how we can move through the experience with gentleness and self-compassion. The ceramic cup is broken, pieces removed, remade with new clay, fired, and glazed into a new form. Through the process and method of making, the cup represents learning to pick up the pieces and rebuild. The broken pieces need support, and the new material needs to be added carefully, in order for the cup to not fall apart. The slow, gentle, and careful way the cup needs to physically be made, becomes a metaphor for the grieving process itself. It’s not the same, many pieces are gone, they can only be replaced with something new, something you didn’t want or ask for.

It’s still a cup. It will just never be the same as what it was before.

The tea is poured. So many cups of tea. And conversations.

People want to fix you, to made it better, to bring you back to the culture of happiness. They can’t. And although those around are pouring words of comfort, those words continue to pour through. The words aren’t helping, they are unable to fix anything.

The tea continues to pour, along with the milk, spoiling the clothes, it can’t be contained.

All the viewer can do is be present and bear witness. It’s an experience to be supported through, not a problem to be fixed.

Acknowledgement is everything.