Three years ago, I had my first proper solo show. It was called On The Threshold (you can see images of it on my website, under Shows), and I explored the in-between spaces of dream, sleep, and death. There was a series in it called Little Deaths. That summer, Habibi, my six-pound terror-cat, brought me a fresh kill at least three or four times a week. Not really knowing why, I began documenting them. They were almost invariably birds, though every once in a while I’d get a shrew, a few field mice; once, a pile of large moths.
It was only after the show opened and friends of the family, who had known me since I had emigrated to the States, approached me to offer their sympathy, that I realised fully what the show was: I had put the grieving of my mother’s terminal diagnosis on display.
When she was diagnosed, I stopped eating and began to sleep eleven, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a night. A month or two later, concerned over my severe fatigue, which WebMD had diagnosed as HIV (cue a horrid panic attack on my bed with my laptop), I went to the doctor and discovered my thyroid had suddenly become slow. With low doses of synthroid, I gradually brought it back up to normal, but during those months I slipped into states of deep sleep, where I dreamed vividly and vibrantly almost every single night.
I’ve had vivid dreams since I was very small (I still have clear memories of complicated dreams I experienced as early as four or five years old), but they never came in such frequency. And they were brilliant, these dreams: each one more beautiful than the last. Prehistoric horses began to pay me visits, with rudimentary three-toed hooves and dark brown stripes on their backs. Their large, donkey-like heads pressed close to my face and their gentle black eyes gazed right through me.
Other nights I had strong recollections of past lives. I had a recurring dream that took different shapes, wherein I had had two children that had died in a fire of some kind. I cried over their small, doll-sized bodies as I buried them in sand in a ruined greenhouse; it was on a Victorian estate. There was a cruel, cold man who owned the property; he was related to me and the children were born of incest. Another night, I dreamed that I had had a baby who died, and it was a rainy day in the city as I walked to a bus stop, crying. My old friend Jason was at the corner, and he brushed off my sadness like it was nothing important.
Both of those times I woke up crying, and walked around in a catatonic state for half the day.
Occasionally I woke up sure I had seen into someone else’s life; someone I didn’t know and would probably never know. I dreamed once that I was an opera singer, young and beautiful, with long, curly red hair. Me and my choir were traveling different cities, and on this occasion, all slept in one room on the floor. I got up in the middle of the night and found a pair of scissors. I flicked on the bathroom light and began to chop at my hair, the locks filling the sink. One of the choir members woke; he shouted at me to stop, as others began to wake. “What are you doing?” he shouted, “Your beautiful hair!”
“I don’t want to be known for my hair! None of you know who I am; all you see is my beauty and I can’t live like this anymore,” I shouted back, enraged. After that I woke, my hands in fists gripping the blanket.
I spent so much time in hospitals that year; I would put on a brave face and come in to see my mother, inevitably start crying, and eventually pull myself together to have a conversation, just in time for my mother to receive her dose of morphine, after which she would send me away, knowing she would drift quickly off to sleep. I would traverse the labyrinth halls of Jefferson Hills Hospital or Magee Women’s, wherever she happened to be at the time, and at the parking lot I would crumple into my lap and cry into my elbows.
But at night — at night I went so far away. I sat in a moonlit room, as a jackal and a lion silently padded in and lay on either side of me. I drove through empty, snowy streets to find herds of horses downtown, waiting quietly for me. I had holy visions, once or twice. My dreams protected me and provided padding for the reality that faced me when I woke. Of course my work reflected that; how could it not?
And in fact, that first solo show was my first foray in conceptual work. Prior to that, having spent four years in a conceptually-based art school, I never had anything to say. I lived for beauty; I still do. I thought my duty as an artist was to show beauty. But back then there was no substance. I could never fully commit to being a student, as I had to work to support myself. My saving grace and the reason I was able to develop a portfolio at all was that I worked exceptionally fast, and I continue to work at a frenetic pace today. But I digested slowly — when I received feedback or criticism, I wrote it down, I thought on it, I tried to find a way to react quickly to it, but it was like my brain was filled with molasses. I could only fully internalise and put into practice the feedback I was given months after the semester was over and the grade had been given. I spent four years trying to figure out what the administration and the faculty wanted to hear, worried that what I actually said wouldn’t be good enough.
Then my mother got sick, and suddenly I was struck with the most difficult thing I’ve ever faced. I had something to say. I just didn’t say it with my intellect. I didn’t even realise I was saying it until it was out on paper and became its own show, a full-fledged body of work.
Now my work is a continuation of those themes I started three years ago; the problem is, because I’m in the midst of it, its hard for me to talk about it, much less write about it. I only now understand that the growling dogs I dreamed of were the Welsh hounds of the hunt, a sign of ill portent. The reason I dreamed of them is the same reason I drew dead birds: it’s how I face the idea of mortality, of impending expiration. The strange thing is, in my dreams I’m always alert but never terrified of them. And now they knock about in the dark as I’m going to sleep, and since, in the words of my friend Sam, they seem to “just wanna nuzzle,” I tell them to behave and fall asleep easily. I could argue that this is me coming to terms with death, making it a fellow traveler I can play chess with, not to run away from through the countryside (thank you, Bergman). But how do I write about that and make it important to a graduate admissions panel? How am I reinventing my medium or making my mark in the greater context of contemporary art and art history? I don’t want to bullshit and lie anymore, I don’t want to trump up my words and phrasing so I can sound like my work is more important than it is. It’s important to me. It’s important to people who look at it and are moved by it.
I just know I want to be sincere.
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