Julius Cavira

Why the Chi Guy Cries

Website

Cavira is an interdisciplinary Conceptual artist... nuff said.

This is a video of the completed installation of work.

The flag was a pain to raise, but what a sight it is to see it up!

The work is on-site, but more must be done.

Let's not forget the SandBox!

I have a lot of pills to contend with.

The Rosary prayer beads were the most fragile piece, and I was lucky none of them broke.

This is the sandbox piece before the installation.

The donation cans are all new concepts that were for another piece entirely!

36 Month Prescribed Trauma

The work is an assortment of brightly colored basketball-sized pills which are of varying lengths, shapes, and designs. These pills are placed on a stretched-out platform that takes up a prominent area in the center of the floor. It is made of mixed media of rubber and wood on foam board.

The work discusses my three-year-long trial and error phase with the VA of finding the right pills that work well for me, right after being medically discharged with PTSD and severe depression from the US Army.

Free Advice, A Chaplain's Vice.

Free Advice, a Chaplain’s Vice talks about my time in the US Army seeking help from a military therapist known as a Chaplain.

Mental Medical Shackle

Mental Medical Shackle is an oversize winding medical bracelet that was given to me in the impatient ward of the VA Hospital.

Other Work

Postwar Sandbox PTSD Therapy is literally a tall cube composed of sand, and embedded in it is a used metal folding chair partly exposed.

Postwar Sandbox PTSD Therapy is about receiving help and Letting the sands of time reveal the metal folding chair often used in group therapy—to be present in the therapy sessions, rather than ruminating of a past long gone.

Gone But Not Forgotten? is a 10-foot-tall painted all-white United States flag that is hung up vertically to the ceiling and freely draping down. There's a visible bullet hole stain on both sides. And a dark red bloodline flows down from it, making a red puddle on the floor.

Gone But Not Forgotten?' is very controversial piece for me because it exhibits the stock market ticker for 2004, the year I was enlisted in the US Army and the other side is a plain white background (the predominate white society of power) with a thin red bloodline coming from a bullet hole.

The piece at is a gigantic rosary. And the beads are fashioned as the ball and chain seen in medieval prisons.

Guilt Stricken Religious Obligations highlights the idea of self-imposed mental confinement as penance for whatever heinous crimes we’ve committed, according to our faith.