Statement: In many funerary traditions, it is customary to bury one's dead in their finest clothes, surrounded and carried by those who remember them directly––an act of invented final-memory and a paying of respect for how things previously were, rather than how they presently are. Following this logic, A Most Important Meal eulogizes both space and potential that will inevitably be lost. The artwork is installed in an unoccupied home, past any point of repair where a meaningful vestige of the structure could be preserved. Rebirth notwithstanding as an option, A Most Important Meal uses the material language of ceramic tile as an architectural investment related to everyday urgencies of life––kitchens, hearths, bathrooms, thresholds, etc––which might serve as permanent and final clothing for a home slowly reclaimed by its surrounding land and the hubris of its own assembly. In addition to regular tile, materials were invited from those living in the surrounding area to incite a kind of ritual. These were then worked into the shape of the tile pattern which forms a record of this concentration attention, as well as, a literal memorial object.
These gestures aim to be an exercise in celebration but also, more centrally, of mourning. A Most Important Meal takes the perspective that in the presence of any damage done (or damage being done) by humans, reversal alone does not constitute healing. Analogous to the injury inflicted to our communities, families, and our own bodies at the hand of industry and climate change, there exists yet no adequate repentance. Nonetheless, through this kind of collective eulogy. This work proposes new forms of making-sacred and apology, as a response to new forms of collective disrepair.
For more information on A Most Important Meal and for a gallery of submitted objects, see the following spark page: https://spark.adobe.com/page/2lnBBT7LQpccQ/
