“A Ringing glass that shatters as it rings” exhibition statement
Maggie Hayes: A Ringing Glass that Shatters as it Rings
April 15–24, 2021
Day & Night Projects, Atlanta, GA
ARTIST STATEMENT
“Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient, be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus
This body of work is about the transformational process that occurs from letting in, and letting go, the dance we are always in between what is form and what is formless. I see the body in its greatest capacity as a channel for creative energy. When we allow that energy of creation to flow through us (regardless of the type of activities we find ourselves engaged in, certainly not limited to the “arts”), it can cause a sense of expansion in which we feel our existence coming from and extending beyond the human threshold, we may have a sense of touching or connecting to the divine. In order to awaken to this divine energy moving through us, we have to detach from the rigid self-concept in which we see ourselves as only small and limited, disconnected from our capacity to grow and self-actualize at a soul level.
On the other hand, if we become overly identified with the limitless expanse of spirit, we may ignore or neglect the reality of our earth bound existence as a human being with a human body. We may see ourselves only as the “ringing,” forgetting that the only way the ringing is able to be sensed and felt and carried into experience is through the form of the glass.
Embodied presence lies in this perpetual and simultaneous breaking and ringing. As human beings, we are neither the inanimate form (glass), nor the bodiless resonance (ringing), we are ringing as we shatter, we are creating as we die. We have no way to escape the finitude of our existence in this plane, no means to escape our own impermanence or the impermanence of everything around us... but, what if we don’t have to try to?
What if we can be spacious enough to be creating and dying at once without any resistance to what is divine nor to what is human about us? If in each moment, each day, each season, each year, each life we have, we can embrace this connection to all that is eternal within us, as well as all that is contained in this impermanent, irreplicable moment. There is nothing to hold onto because it is all passing, it is only to be truly with it all, ringing from our deepest source of truth.
This effort to clear the way for the most non referential resonance of my soul to be expressed is continued through the live performance of a seven-day silent meditation and water fast in which I will be remain in the gallery throughout the week.