The text is from the final the thesis of the MFA that I received from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. For quite some time, I did not include these poems and drawings in what I consider my body of work. This was largely a result of what I felt was an unsuccessful initial presentation alongside images and paintings that, in reality, were really part of a different line of thought. By removing this text and drawings from that initial context, the power inherent in the specific medium comes into focus. It also becomes clear that they are just as much concerned with geometry and territory as later work – albeit expressed in a different medium. At the same time, the reference to an underlying trauma and narrative traced in the text as well as the drawn forms foreshadows the concern for history, trauma, and site that emerges in the practice.
The text of the work is divided in two parts. The first is presented as 026_08_730 while the second is 026_08_731. The first part is an account from within from the perspective of a primary narrator who serves as the subject of the work. The second is an account from beyond the limits of where that narrator has been confined. While the first part reads as a desire to escape, understand the terms of confinement, and find the conditions for freedom, the second part reads as a report of what is happening within. Both have been redacted to remove “sensitive” information. This process of erasure on one hand is intended to affect a sense of history and depth to the work – giving each page value through the investment in removal. At the same time, the act is intended to destabilize the singular narrative either from within or without in order to lend each the capacity to describe a more universal condition and evoke a wider range of emotions in the reader through abstraction.