epigraph for another room | crystal Mowry

epigraph for another room

Years later you will recall the night when you became a trilogy.

The first You is the germ of the being you are today. A troubled relationship with the monumental has prepared you for living as though you are always, merely, passing through. Like the seeds from poplar, ash, and maple, spinning elegantly in what seems like slow-motion. What is it like to move through the world knowing only anticipation?

Uncommon knowledge reminds you that there are places where it is illegal to make frottage records of gravestones, the argument being that in the act of retrieval, one is bound to cause physical harm. But what of inherent vice? An archive should not be bound by the same rules of the body, you repeat to yourself while you wander the cemetery on route to the garden. Night casts each granite contour as a lacuna. In your mind, you gather these shapes and intuitively arrange them on a level plane. A lover or maybe another you to be cut out and assembled anew.

The second You lived through not one plague, but two. “Good fortune,” some say, but they know nothing of the strategies that have enabled your survival. You keep Leo’s wisdom hand-written on a piece of paper, creased, with a corner wedged into your coat pocket seam: Desire, by its very nature, turns us away from its objects. 1 What event led you to retain these words, to make them your gospel? Shoulders arched in defence, your hands buried in pockets lined with fiammata. Out of habit, you trace a forefinger along the fabric’s angles and undulating lines. First rose, then marigold, then periwinkle. A palette between a sunrise and a chemical high.

Each epigraph can also be a talisman.

This life feels different. The third You, a miasmic entity, moves through a future state, haunting the cemeteries and gardens where you once found love or pleasure. You are your own vigil. For a moment, you will remember the nights where you feared you would be a beacon to those from whom you would rather remain hidden. Lana warns of the acute awareness “of the preciousness of anonymity -- understanding it as a form of virginity, something you only lose once. Anonymity allows you access to civic space, to a form of participation in public life, to an egalitarian invisibility…” 2 Under the glow of sodium vapour street lights, both skin and concrete turn warm, metallic. This glow, you learn, is the by-product of what engineers have called “excited atoms.” Pressure builds on a microscopic scale in lamps as in the flesh. The amber light reminds your body that it too is a kind of traffic. Proceed only if stopping will cause harm. A civic measure to enhance visibility, while stealing your vision and with it the ability to locate yourself in what follows.

1 Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” October, Vol. 43, AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism. (Winter, 1987): 221.

2 Lana Wachowski, “Lana Wachowski’s HRC Visibility Award Acceptance Speech (Transcript).” The Hollywood Reporter, October 29, 2012, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lana-wachowskis-hrc-visibility-award-382177.

Crystal Mowry is Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Her curatorial projects include group exhibitions such as The Limits (2011), Imitation of Life (2015), The Brain is wider than the Sky (2018), and I’ll be your Mirror (2018). She has curated solo projects and commissions with artists such as Deanna Bowen, Aislinn Thomas, Joseph Tisiga, and geetha thurairajah. Her solo projects with Ontario-based artists Maggie Groat and Ernest Daetwyler have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. She has written about and around art for various artist-focused projects, including Still Move: Brendan Fernandes, a monograph on the performance and installation work of Brendan Fernandes.

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