42

2021, graphite on black paper, 244" x 183"         

When I was a child, I was fascinated by mummies and canopic jars in museum collections and thought that the ancient Egyptians were fascinated with death. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that they were actually so in love with life that they wanted it to continue beyond death. Much like contemporary obituaries, their tombs speak about their work, families, pets and hobbies. The distance I’d imagined between them and me became more about style than substance, and I was wondered what their work might look like if they were living today.

42 is a multi-part self portrait based in a section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead where a deceased person’s soul goes before a panel of forty-two judges who decide whether they deserve to move forward towards a paradise called the Land of the Reeds. I imagined being on my deathbed and realized I would judge myself by how I had treated people in my life. Using the framework of the panel of forty-two judges, I drew the eyes of forty-one people who have been significant in my life. Each person was asked to send me a selfie they took while they were thinking about me. Every eye’s expression reflects the nature of that relationship: the good, the bad, the love, the anger and the regrets. Drawing the eyes was an unexpectedly emotional experience for me. It made me realize how many people have shown me amazing grace, love and kindness that I didn’t feel I deserved. The group of forty-one drawings creates an implied forty-second judge: myself.

Using graphite on black paper to mimic the dusky view of a Claude glass, the black mirror used by artists to indirectly view the landscape, is a way of imagining a deathbed experience. The reflective quality of the graphite means that the drawings can be quite bright or ghostly and almost invisible depending on their angle to the light source.