Markues (en)

Why Don’t You Weep?
solo exhibition, Spaced Out, Kerkow, 23.6. – 1.9.2024

In the middle of a night in January, plagued by restlessness and hunger, I went to the fridge, cut open the plastic packaging of a smoked tofu and ate it alone in bed. The next morning I woke up next to the empty wrapper. This scene, which reflects a mixture of sadness, introspection and everyday life, became the starting point for the installation Why don’t you weep?

14 hammocks are suspended between the wooden beams of the former granary at Gut Kerkow, immersing the room in an atmosphere of contemplation and reflection. The hammocks are colored in a soft, slightly purple-reddish shimmer and invite visitors to lie down in them and be held by them. In the course of the exhibition, I embroider them with barely legible inscriptions such as ” those who sow the storm”, “you chose it this way”, “poverty isn’t destiny”, “believe women” or “doctors have said people can only withstand so much” and encourage visitors to reflect on social and personal narratives associated with anger, pain and resistance.

How can we adjust our view of the world when each individual realizes that others have (also) experienced incomprehensible suffering? Do we not need to reflect more deeply on our own knowledge and emotions in order to acknowledge such suffering without identifying with it? What happens to us when we lose the ability to grieve and are still forced to carry on with our everyday lives? Can grief be a way of putting our own experiences in an appropriate relationship to those of others?

I propose to consider grief as a necessary mental state that is often postponed or delayed for activist, political or health concerns or due to societal pressures. The four readings that activate the installation during the exhibition offer opportunities to explore the reasons for delayed grief in an environment of introspective quiet listening. From personal loss to societal trauma, the texts read open up a space to reflect on the complexity of grieving processes. Events such as flight, resettlement, pandemics or structural discrimination experienced on a daily basis can trigger grief and pain, which often have to be suppressed because of their extent.

Why don’t you weep? is a place to come together, to be for yourself and with others at the same time. It is a place where it is not about sharing one’s own experiences, but a chance to discover other ways of dealing with gloom and dejection. I see the installation as a temporary interruption that invites visitors to reconsider the meaning of grief in their own lives and gently encourages them to answer the question in the installation’s title for themselves.

• 23.6.2024, Markues reads Ich ließ dich los nach ein paar schönen Jahren by Detlev Meyer
• 30.6.2024, Samantha Bohatsch reads When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
• 28.7.2024, Merle Vorwald reads from Dauergloss and juxtaposes her own text with passages from At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz by Jean Améry and Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered by Ruth Klüger
• 1.9.2024, John MacLean reads Our Grateful Dead by Vinciane Despret