Becky Wilkes

Curation

Jul 19

Written By Sybylla Smith

'God, this sun feels good'

'Take me with you'

'Afternoon delight'

For this exhibit:

‘Till Death Do Us Part’

Becky and I began our collaboration by addressing her profoundly personal documentary project of capturing her parents' concurrent end-of-life experiences. Midway through our ongoing editing of 1000+ images, while we were building a context for this poignant work, an exhibition opportunity at Arts Fort Worth presented itself.
Becky and I began to conceptualize how to convey the import of this work, a reflection of the universal experience of death. We explored and discovered multi-media experiences that layered the emotional complexity of mortality, aging, and grief. As often happens, the work directed the conversation—calling for us to touch on the humor, absurdity, infuriation, helplessness, and wonder that infused this experience.
We were able to activate and animate the fullness of lives woven together by love in multimedia fashion. In tandem, we remained aware of our goal to craft a public experience while concurrently respecting Becky’s grief process. We each allowed our imaginations to consider ways for viewers to enter this subject while honoring how poignant, oft-times humorous, and always deeply intimate this confluence of love and loss is in real life.
In addition to the exhibition’s framed pieces, we made use of specific overwhelming aspects of their experience by channeling them into interactive elements, including:
an installation of ‘furniture’ made from boxes of incontinent pads
sympathy card text compilations installed in gallery windows
a collage-print-turned tabletop to allow viewers to reflect
a stereoscope series capturing intimate medical moments
a timeline of text communications between Becky and her siblings that became a short film

“Syb literally took my breath away at that first consultation with her ability to see me and to see my work, not just photographically but the ‘behind the scene’ intensive care I had provided my parents. She framed my work as a love triangle, between myself and my parents, and identified threads of intimacy and vulnerability running throughout. This took me forever to understand intuitively.”
- Becky Wilkes