Inspired by Alina Szapocznikow

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/12/28/arts/alin190.jpg

The delicious joys of the mouth! But also, alas, the curse of having a mouth! Filled with the bitter taste of memories one chokes on; a melancholy mouth that neither swallows nor spits things out but continues chewing, dismembering the remembered, in a ceasless grinding motion of the teeth. Imagine a mouth that was both one of infinte joys and of endless mourning. I say this is the mouth of Alina Szapocznikow.

Jan Verwoert

Since I first encountered the work of Alina Szapocznikow at an exhibition in Leeds I have wanted to explore the ideas of sensuality and memory through the mouth. And Szapocznikow's use of chewing gum is so sculptural and abstractly, surprisingly beautiful that to emulate it seemed the only logical path. That she was Polish and that I would soon be living in Poland was a complete coincidence, but as with Szapocznikow it has been the history of Poland that has dictated the form and feel of this work. It is not really about sensuality, but it is about memory, and memories connection to something previously physical, now not only invisible but non-existent.

I had never before encountered the Jewish custom of placing stones on graves and memorials to commemorate the Dead. I don't know whether it is because of the Holocaust and therefore the greater sigificance behind these memorials, or because of the simplicity but sincerity of the act, but it is something that always makes me feel incredibly reflective. I also don't know whether the way I discovered this custom matters, although it does seem to cheapen it, but my experience of it has chiefly come through tour guides and trips. But perhaps I would not have discovered it at all if it were not for my seemingly 'very touristy' trips to synagogues, war memorials, or to Auschwitz. It is also regrettable to me to think that the place I have learnt most about Jewish culture, Krakow, is a place where now the Jewish population numbers around 100 registered Jews.

My aim with this work with chewing gum was essentially to create a memorial pile of stones, but for the stones to more visually represent the bodies that the stones really stand for. Perhaps sensually, in that there is a direct physical connection to the body, perhaps even traces of saliva, imprints from the teeth, the tongue, the gums. Gum as a material is also more like flesh; it is soft and susceptible to its environment and to the workings of humans, to wounds, to scars, to imprint and impression.

The idea of a pile of stones as really being a pile of bodies brings up images of the Holocaust, which I think is perhaps why the stones piled on and around memorials to the Holocaust and to the victims of WWII seem such a tragically fitting acknowledgement of the past.

These photos are of the work in progress.