BLACK ACRES

Artist Statement

    The ivy grows; winding its tendrils around forgotten stones that mark what was once home - a reminder of who you were before your physical body left us behind. The leaves are wilted but their beauty remains even as they succumb to time’s grasp slowly fading away like lost dreams or broken promises never meant for tomorrow’s light. Your spirit lives eternal amidst these petals and stems growing tall with each recollection shared across digital landscapes. 
   In life there is no guarantee nor final answer upon death, yet virtual immortality awaits on internet; deep beyond human understanding eternally connected. This is the garden that I have created. It is a place of nostalgia, contemplation, and symbolism. It can be seen as both reverence for life after death, but also invokes questions about closure when mourning has spanned beyond this earthly plane or reality, as we know it, living on within cyberspace.
   This space is a meaningful comment on the modern realities of death in a digital age. The theme of this chap book and installation presented centers on what happens to our digital identity thereafter. During life who we are, fluidly moves and evolves. Posthumously it is the very same. I argue that the wilderness of metaverse takes hold once you are gone. To me this is a far greater fate than that of spoken history. Overgrown in the garden, you will become something different. Be it your image or legacy, you will not be the same. Fleeting traces of who you were, will be seeds sowed across the internet. Some of us will fall onto fertile ground while others will fall onto the beaten path. In rare instances, a few of us might be left alone in the garden of interpretation; only to someday grow into internet lore. Pixels and code strings become internet folklore like ivy growing over that have passed. They are projected onward into something of their own out there. This is the crux of my work. I have created digital cemetery, both in a physical and virtual space that captures this phenomenon. Through exploration in poetry and mixed media installation art, I endeavor to explore what happens beyond death when it comes to our collective identity online. My vision tells of identities that have transitioned and aims to inform the visitor of digital estate planning. As a collective voice about identity composition posthumously, I want to encourage audience members’ contemplation on their own relationship with how they will be seen when physically gone from this earthly plane—and explore virtual potential spaces in all its ephemerality beyond physical form that remains past life’s expiration date.