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Installation Guest Speaker transcripts
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Perhaps the idea of ‘missing-ness’ is true for many of us, a common intergenerational theme. This was the creative alchemic stew that had been brewing within me for some time seeking a way to take shape and form.
Part of the crucible of this creation was my work in the social sector as a resident artist, poet, writer and workshop facilitator. I worked in this role at Anglican Action (Hamilton, New Zealand), a social service agency, from 2011 until the end of 2015. In the social sector at that time, we would encounter an ingrained mindset that demanded unrealistic change, for as little cost as possible, in the lives of people who found themselves at the margins requiring help. If this change was not achieved within short time frames and tight budgets, then people were treated punitively. Often the focus was on fixing and improving the surface of a person’s life yet the interior realities in which the troubles were sourced were left undisturbed.
A question began to niggle in me. How can we expect a person to change when they have gone missing because of unresolved trauma and that reality goes unaddressed? When ‘missing-ness’ is an intergenerational cycle then a person’s sense of belonging is drastically dislocated. For many clients whose stories I listened to, home was not a safe place to grow up in. Without connection and belonging that feels safe how does one orientate themselves towards a better future, let alone a homecoming? How does one even know how to create a home that is different to the old pattern they learned?
In the case of women, the mothers that came to Anglican Action often had the worst kind of childhoods imaginable. The extremities of these ranged from being beaten, witnessing a mother being hurt, sexual and psychological abuse, exposure to prostitution, to drugs, to gang life or having an imprisoned parent. These were some of the tragic beginnings in each woman’s story. But these beginnings were often no different to what their own parents had experienced. These backgrounds seemed incomprehensibly incongruent with the demand for speedy change. To help a woman who has had that kind of childhood recover and become a better mother is no quick fix. Wanting better mothers did not often include the recovery of the woman who had gone missing when she was a little girl. It was a tough, pressured and often untenable, therefore unjust situation created and complied with.
There were agencies like the one I was working for who were trying to find ways to resist this punitive mindset with the best alternative practice they could offer considering the resources available to them. Still, there was a little furnace of anger and lament bubbling away in me regarding the larger context. This resulted in a desire to quest what a healing space for those women I was encountering could be. For in each one I heard something of my mother’s experience of trauma, and my own experience of losing something precious about myself. I wanted to give attention to what happens between a way of life and identity that is dying and the emergence of a new trajectory. For in this mysterious and often hidden process is found the paths of transformation. It was at the intersection between my private life, my professional life and my reflective musings as an artist I wrote a story for women.
It is now five years since I first started writing “Letters to a Missing Woman” which I completed at the end of 2014. I had reached a place and time in my life where I wanted to harvest the meaning of all I had learned so far about being in a creative and transforming process. I was compelled to write about being a woman moving through a profound transition, a great transfiguration and what we tend to term so inadequately as ‘change’. I was motivated by a desire to reveal what it can feel like to travel through the passage that runs between the dark metamorphosis of painful endings and the tenderness of tentative new beginnings.
I remember when and where I was when the gestating idea turned into a clear writing and art project. At the beginning of winter in 2014 I spent a five-day retreat at my most beloved beach. I was contemplatively reading the book “Dark Nights of the Soul” by Thomas Moore. There I reflected on my life, vocation and the dark night of soul I was becoming well acquainted with in myself. My best work as an artist depends on how intimate I am with the subject or theme at hand and how much life on life contact I have with it. I pondered what I could write and create visually about transformation in challenge to the doctrine of “you must change”. It started out as an idea about exchanging letters between two characters, the missing and the seeker. It was through images, creating with my hands, journaling, writing poetry and many letters that had become critical ways to carry out my own search for my missing woman. It was to those resources that I turned looking for images of transformation, the metaphors, the howling questions, the discoveries, and the hope. I wanted to create a soulful and intimate conversation. Hence the story acquired its name and its contents were drawn from my own private collection of creative inquiry.
In the heart of winter on a wild west coast beach I found one clear idea to bring all the depth I could to the surface. It tipped me over an edge, where all odysseys launch off from and committed me to the free-fall that writing a story is. To create art, write poetry or a story is to enter the void of uncertainty and possibility.
“Letters to a Missing Woman” took me on a journey. It became a way of opening robust, honest and vulnerable conversations firstly with the woman clients at Anglican Action. Many of the women struggled to believe in their own worth. ‘Woman’ had come to mean something that lacked real dignity and sacredness. 'Normal' had become the normalisation of trauma, abuse, violence, co-dependency, addictions, and being objectified as a woman. I ran weekly workshops using the story to educate and reflect on the potential for recovery, and 'becoming', one dogged step at a time.
I turned the story into an intricate art installation. Through this more women and men became interested in the story and the workshops. Since 2014 I have run many more in various settings and have found that the themes resonated with people I did not expect. It seems that regardless of who we are there are reasons, there are events through which we go missing in our lives. This story is for those who feel homesick for their ‘missing-ness’ to return to them.
We may be a missing woman or man. Whether we have been one, are one, or seeking to help those that have forgotten their way home my great hope is that together we will find ways to recover the missing. Let us find the enormity of an ongoing transformation together.
Opening Night 31st July 2015 , Hamilton, New Zealand
Opening Night Guest Speaker - Dr Bev Gatenby
“I am going to use a series of straightforward questions to try and make some straightforward comments on what is a complex, evocative and powerful work;
· What is this art work?
· And what is it all about?
· And what might we take from it?
1. What is this art work?
I think the term would be “mixed media” – lots of different forms, creating lots of layers.
TEXTUAL – a series of letters plus poetry, prose and many quotes from great mystics and poets.
VISUAL – a series of pictures, some almost poster-like, pastiche of images of angels, mermaids, wings, sea, stones, butterflies and so on… and installation of sculptures, a series of women in elaborate paper tissue pattern dresses in a context of visual images in space.
The text is on the lines but not on the lines and sometimes the text itself is a picture – words woven over and around the lines. It seems to me to combine the artists love of language and love of ‘making things’ – a wonderful combination of words and visual art, which is one of the ways that it challenges us and appeals to so many of our ways of knowing. It seeks a many-layered subliminal and conscious response from us, as viewers and readers.
2. And what is it all about?
The million dollar question! Which is probably never satisfactorily answered… I acknowledge I have only had 1 week and need to come back maybe many times.
First up – it is a journey, and odyssey, it deliberately locates itself in the mythic and archetypal ‘odyssey’ stories (such as Homer), i.e. a journey of both internal and external movement, through which we face many challenges, dangers, characters and learnings with a great homecoming. In this case it is both one woman’s and all women’s journey – ‘to find ourselves’, ‘to be transformed’, ‘to know our souls’.
There are 6 scenes or parts of the odyssey;
SCENE ONE: DEPARTURE – our woman realises she is shut in a “derelict house” (the wardrobe) – constrained and restrained, and that she has gone missing in her own life. She determines to break free and embark on the journey, i.e. to become open to transformation.
SCENE TWO: THE WILDERNESS – the feeling of being lost, intensifies through her commitment to explore, to journey means “most of all I learned to float”. There is an abyss here, there is grief and there are hints of transformation. We meet the pohutukawa tree – which grounds this art and us firmly in Aotearoa – a tree willing to uproot itself and to float out to sea. There is an acknowledgement of how strange and challenging this journey of transformation is.
SCENE THREE: THE NIGHT SEA VOYAGE – the wilderness comes to an end and we arrive at the sea, “all that cradles you now is the dark night”. There is no control over the voyage (the dark night of the soul), at this this stage except in choosing to listen to the darkness “which breathed and echoed with memory, story, lament, longing and prayer.” The depths of pain and loss and in these are also a re-birthing. Our woman finds and carries a stone.
SCENE FOUR: PUTTING A STONE TO REST – now the proverbial “stone in my shoe”. This stone represents the suffering we continue to carry, the patterns of hurt we cling to. There is a movement toward letting go, putting down all those stones – symbolises forgiving ourselves, understanding and being responsible for our imperfections. For a while, our woman joins a group of women all gathering and carrying stones – there is companionship here but it is not the answer, she wants to help them but is not free of her own stones and must strike out away from them (they scream at her). However, butterflies, a letter and the pohutukawa tree beckon her forward.
SCENE FIVE: THE NIGHT OF FIRE – she builds a fire, around which gathers the wisdom of the pohutukawa tree re-rooting itself, other tattered but healing women, and the goddess “Dark Mother”. There is a time of being “Between Lives” – trying out other ways of living with a gradual movement towards acceptance, including knowing that we only partially see ourselves and yet only we can know our own transformation – “only you hold the vision of unfolding possibility… a passionate growing edge of beautiful complexity… you are the welcome to your homesick soul…”
SCENE SIX: BEAUTIFULLY TORN – the acceptance of our beautiful wounds is near complete. There are new wings provided through the Dark Mother’s ritual, and there are still beautiful tatters – “your imperfections are not for shame – to be beautifully torn is no curse, each flaw tells a story of death and re-birth.” And now we may at times be a guide for others. Our woman and we are home to ourselves.
Some strong images and symbols throughout - the way the images and symbols appear and re-appear throughout tells us that we move between these scenes many times, it is not a linear journey and we don’t get to come home once and stay there, there are many departures and many homecomings.
KEY IMAGES;
· Wing - birds, butterflies (emerging from chrysalis), angels, feathers – flying, uplifting but also “tatters”, “tattered wings”
· Birth and death/womb and tomb – orphans,
· Stones
· Shards of mirror – reflection – Corinthians “For now we see through a glass darkly”
· Derelict house/Home – soul (sole of feet), “My father’s house has many rooms” (John), many Christian symbols e.g. communion
CONTRAST IS WOVEN THROUGHOUT;
· Birth and death
· Water and sand
· Feathers and stone
· Patterns and disrupting patterns – e.g. broken crockery (willow pattern) – shards and some birds refers to “the printed patterns cast and glazed in me” – the social expectations of what it means to be a woman
· Remade sewing patterns
· The use of patterned paper for flowers, butterflies, wings and so on
A DEEPLY FEMININE WORK (though with messages for all of us);
Feminine images – a resistance and breaking free and a resting on those patterns (it is better to have form a form and shape than to have no form or shape)
A DEEPLY SPIRITUAL WORK – there are many Gods here
· God of winged beings
· God of the drowning
· God who lets go
· God of dwellings
· God who broods over the formless and shapeless
· God who sees me
· God of homecoming
I sense a deep desire throughout the work to make that essential connection between a creator and our souls, and for that to be grounded through the soles of our feet.
3. So what should we take from this artwork? What messages are there for us?
The artist wants something of us – the letters are also to each one of us.
· Be open to transformation, take the journey, embark on your odyssey. Do not think that “change” as it is talked about often in the social services is the same thing as transformation.
· Know that it will be both painful and beautiful – be courageous about this.
· For social services – lay down and let go of your own stones before assisting others with their, forgive ourselves, accept pain.
· Set out to reflect (shards of mirrors), make time and space to be introspective.
· Find a place of home both in the world and for your soul.
· Be proud of your/our tattered wings – love them.
I want to end with a short poem by poet Gregory Orr (accidentally shot and killed his brother at age 12 and whose father was addicted to amphetamines). A poem about transcendence;
Some say you’re lucky
Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.
But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.
It’s deep inside every person
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.
It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.
Thank you Maree for the transcendent gift of your art."
Dr Bev Gatenby is a mother of four daughters and lived in the beautiful Waikato for over 30 years. Bev was the Chief Executive of Trust Waikato, a regional philanthropic trust until her resignation in 2016. She has worked as an academic, researcher, consultant, and volunteer, and in recent years, as a manager in the community and voluntary sector. In 2004 she completed a doctorate in which she was privileged to work with the staff of Anglican Action as they established what was then known as Cross Rose Centre. Her commitments are to social justice in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Opening Night , 20th May 2016, Auckland, New Zealand
Opening Night Guest Speaker - Mark Pierson
"Having seen Letters To a Missing Woman installed in the busy and quite large yet confined spaces of Anglican Action in Hamilton, and knowing the complexity and depth of the work, I wondered how Maree would peel it off the walls there, let alone re-install it anywhere else, let alone under the John Kinder library at the College of St John’s the Evangelist in Auckland. But she did it. And did it wonderfully well. I have also been wondering what that process was like for her? Her life is presented there… her story. It’s gutsy and raw and deeply personal. It gives Maree nowhere to hide. How was the taking apart, the taking down, the packing up, the journey? Then the unpacking and unwrapping, the modifying and making do in a new venue and a different setting? She opened herself up to friends previously. Tonight she offers herself to strangers. I wonder how that feels for her?
Wondering is what we need to do with the installation. Its not so much a work to be interpreted, or to look for meaning in, as it is an installation—a collection of installations, a series of pericopes—to wonder about, to brush yourself up against, to look at and see what stares back. Not to dissect and understand as a scientist, or even a theologian might, but rather more like a wind, or rain to face into and feel the raw effect on you. To feel before we think. To wonder before we respond.
This is the story Maree has chosen to tell. So we wonder why she has included what she has, and what she has left out? As Karen—Missioner at Anglican Action—said of Maree’s work “It is the willingness to risk herself…that transforms Maree from artist and storyteller to becoming the art and the story. This is the power of her work.” It would have been very easy for Maree to try to evoke sympathy from her viewers; to play the victim, or to use graphic language and images to tell her story and that of others, and try to shock us. The strength of her work is that she doesn’t fall into that trap nor does she fall off at the other end of the spectrum by sanitizing and saccarine-ising the depths of pain and betrayal she has felt.
This is a story of a woman, but it’s not a women’s story. Its not “Woman’s Weekly,” life shot in soft-focus. It is strong and vulnerable, challenging and hopeful, and both specific and general enough to capture something of all of our journeys – of both women and men. In one way or another, and to greater or lesser degrees, we have each gone missing from our lives and are in need of finding that which has gone missing in us—been lost from us, by us. That which prevents us from being whole.
I venture to say that much of the violence and injustice we have around us in our world, in our homes today, even every 5 minutes that we spend experiencing the installation, is due as much to what has gone missing as it is to current circumstances and contexts of injustice and poverty. And “a world fit for children to play” (which is my measure of an ideal world, taken from my time working with World Vision) will arise only out of our society engaging with enabling people to both find what has gone missing and deal with the practical realities of injustice. As Maree herself said, “Transformation is sheer hard work, … and in a sense you die. It is a journey into the dark and that is the only place from which light and life are born. When you resurface it’s not to a life you have designed but one you are gifted and given that reflects the new beautifully torn you.”
What makes Maree’s work unusual is not that she reframes a sense of human lostness as an odyssey, a journey of searching, but that she does so by combining a collection of strong, moving and meaningful poetry and story, with gorgeous collage and images that engage with the text and vice versa. Together they build layer upon layer of meaning and interpretation. And while it can leave us overwhelmed at times, if we are committed to the odyssey, to this journey of finding who we are meant to be, I would say—the person we were created to be—then we will take the time to discover what it is in Maree’s letters that connects with our own story and heart; what it is that God is saying to us. I said this is Maree’s story. Well it is and it isn’t. It’s a universal story. It describes the journey each of us must make, whether we know it yet or not. The collection of texts that make up the Letters to a Missing Woman is a spiritual writing equal of any, and better than many. Its captivating with its insights. It stands as a companion beside and within the art and it stands alone as a valuable guide to spiritual transformation that impacts the real world. I cannot adequately describe the debt we owe Maree for her work, nor convey the significance of what she has made available to us.
Thank you Maree. In this installation she has not only given us glimpses into her odyssey to find her missing woman, she has given anyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see the possibility of finding their own missing woman, and missing man. That is a great gift to humanity. It is the mission of the Church. What you have done has significance way beyond Aotearoa. Your work is capable of transforming societies worldwide, if we will grasp what you have offered us. (And I am not given to hyperbole!)
I will close with a final quote from Scene Six: Beautifully Torn. I am reminded that the Trinitarian community of God absorbed into itself the pain and suffering of the world, Maree’s work reminds me that pain and injustice are not ends in themselves.
Be not ashamed of your tattered wings
To be beautifully torn draws you to the sea of your thirst
To be beautifully torn means you have risked a life
To be beautifully torn is no curse
Tattered wings are not for ridicule
But for profound tender touch
Through the holes, that tatteredness
Another view opens up of
A vista wide lit
Full of stories that tell of truth
Of a journey of not being silenced
As you return to heal The home of your roots.”
Mark Pierson is passionate about designing worship events and spaces that enable people, inside and outside the church, to engage with the Trinitarian community of God in creative, life-giving, formative and transformative ways.
He is an accredited minister of the Baptist Churches in New Zealand, and over the last 25 years has developed the model of worship curator for the design of worship events. In that time he has written extensively, curated worship events, and led seminars in churches, institutions and festivals around the world on the integration of the arts, faith, and justice using the worship curation model.
Mark’s Master of Ministry (MCD) was an analysis of how God can speak through art – specifically contemporary Stations of the Cross. His 2010 book “The Art of Curating Worship: reshaping the role of worship leader”, is his further contribution to this discussion.