Living Relics

Due to the process-based nature of the Session program, this project will undergo constant modifications; the features of this page provide accruing information on the project’s developments.

Sydney King and Ogemdi Ude’s Living Relics draws out a shared sense of loss and understanding of death that hasn’t yet been physicalized in the body or manifested in thought. King and Ude’s Session examines the precarity of BIPOC bodies, amplified by instances of death and loss that enshroud daily BIPOC life. To address this shared loss, the project offers a variety of meditative spaces, from leading participants through individual dance mediations, to creating plaster molds that involve waiting and breathing, to developing their photographic images in the darkness of the darkroom. How might we allow death to be part of life? The work contends with our bodies and the weight we feel in our chests, in our shoulders, in our abdomens. In what ways does grief shape us? It’s about tracing the body and allowing those traces to gently fall away.

When visitors come into the gallery, the artists will engage them in a private movement practice, followed by a guided self-casting with plaster. By laying strips of plaster gauze and warm water onto their bodies, visitors can create molds of themselves that help to externalize the process of grieving. After visitors depart, the resulting molds will be left to dry in the space. The molds will later be photographed in conjunction with their reflections, conceptualizing an alternative method of seeing and understanding these leftover traces of the body and of personal loss. Ude and King will develop an altar space in the front of the gallery where these molds and photographs will accumulate throughout the Session. This growing collection will begin to paint a picture of our fundamental interconnection.

Throughout the Session, Ude and King will offer kits for remote participation in the plaster casting process. The kits will contain plaster gauze, a small vaseline tub, photographic paper for making lumen prints, plastic sheeting for the floor, and QR code to a recorded movement and mold making guide. For in-person participation, visitors will be able to schedule individual appointments to meet with Ude and King at the gallery following a voluntary health screening and observing social distancing and mask protocols.

Session invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist’s project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change.