TRAVERSE

Traverse I, II and III are all art installations.

Each one centres on a long winding path between walls. You can enter the work at either end. You can walk it however you want. You have freedom to pause at any point, to wander, to go through and return back to where you began.

They are not mazes—so you can’t get lost. However, the path and walls are intended to create a path that obscures your view of both what is ahead and the other walkers around you, but it does not completely hide them.

There is a tension between walking alone and with others. The path can be disorientating at times. It is also purposeful and guided.

I encourage you to consider how you feel as you walk it.

There are essentially three parts to the path:

• The way in, where the path gets darker and the path narrows.

• The centre, where the path is black and the path appears to end

• The way out, where the path gets brighter and the path widens all the way to open.

The path can be considered a journey. It represents a journey because you physically walk it. It also symbolises a journey, into our feelings and struggles and joys, and back out into the world again. This symbolic use of path has long been used as a meditation or prayer tool, like the path at Chartres Cathedral near Paris, France.

Traverse draws on the centuries of prayer labyrinth traditions. It also draws on the work of Emily and Amelia Nagoski and their book “Burnout”. In particular, I found their description of moving through trauma and towards health really beautiful.

Here are some (but not all) ways you could interpret this path, as it goes from:

• Diminishing light to darkness to bright light

• Vulnerable to protected to set free

• Exposed to sheltered to safe

• Closing to closed to open

• Sorrow to grief to hope

• Stressor to stressed to released

• Obstructed to blocked to flowing

• Sin to repentance to absolution

• Regret to forgiveness to released into life

“Traverse developed from my experience of 2020-2021 and all the ways I wrestled with hope in the middle of longing and loss. It tells stories about carrying hope, sorrow, and healing.”

My art often uses physical objects, like the path used in this art installation, as a symbol to explore issues of identity, longing, and hope. I am inspired by so much in our world, and especially by the life of Jesus. I live with Tiffany and our two children and a dog in lutruwita / Tasmania.