Windows and Silence Artist Statement

Outside Looking in

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful we quiver before it” - Donna Tart, The Secret History

There is something enticing about the darkness, about being awake when others are sleeping. Surrounded by people, their illuminated windows a distant testament to life, and I stand on the threshold of existence, invisible to those within.

I exist within a paradox of loving and hating the darkness, for me it holds peace, a city sleeping, the distant hum of traffic, the song of the cicadas drifting in the breeze, the sound of the wind rustling the trees - it’s something that resembles silence, a silence that cannot truly exist. But although those sounds entice me, they draw me in, they also elicit a deep sense of fear within me. Is that the sound of someone breathing, are those footsteps coming towards me, am I truly alone or is somebody watching me?

I’ve always feared the dark, or more what lurks within it, but can you deeply fear and love something simultaneously? As a child it was the monsters under my bed I feared, the toys in the corner of my room morphing into faces staring at me as I tried to find a sleep that would never come. An insomniac. I fear sleep, I delay and evade it. I never know which version of myself tomorrow will bring. And moreover I fear the world that happens around me when I am forced to shut my eyes and relinquish my control over it.

Inside Looking Out

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for all the good it did me.” - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I’ve always felt perceived. Even in the privacy of my bedroom, is someone peering through the window at me. Is my voice catching the wind and trailing outside in the breeze to be overheard by those around me. Does true privacy exist? Watch what you say somebody might hear you, close the curtains tightly, if there is a gap somebody might see you. My greatest fear is to look outside and see a pair of eyes staring back at me.

The sonic environment of the night has always unsettled me, yet at the same time pulled me in. How can I sleep when I hear the distant footsteps, the creak of the gate swinging in the wind, or is it the wind? A tap at the window, a thump outside - I’ll never know what is reality or what is in my mind. Check the wardrobe, under the bed, in the darkest crevices. Check the doors are locked three times, and maybe tonight I’ll find rest.