RISD GRAD SHOW 2020
RISD GRAD SHOW 2020
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A M O R   F A T I

Keavy Handley-Byrne

                                                          

A   L O V E   O F   O N E ' S   F A T E

At age 26, I was lucky enough to meet the woman who would become my wife. We quickly discovered that there were many coincidences and connections that could be found when we examined our lives a little more closely – our parents shared a wedding anniversary, our fathers each had five siblings, Alice’s parents shared their names with my grandfather and his second wife (Walter and Joan). But what quickly became apparent to me were the links between Alice’s mother and my grandmother. Apart from photographs and memories shared by those who knew them, I would never know them.
Jean, my maternal grandmother, died at the age of 44 from a heart attack following lifelong hypertension. My partner Alice’s mother,  Joan, died at age 37 from a kind of breast cancer caused by the BRCA gene mutation. These losses weigh on me daily, despite Jean’s death 17 years before my birth, and Joan’s death more than 20 years before I would meet Alice.
Through contemplation and investigation of the coincidences between these women, my photographic work has become a way to put to paper the grief that links these figures. I have been exploring the reach of their deaths into the wider expanses of our families, and by extension, the way in which medical systems have failed women and their bodies for generations. For my partner and I, their deaths foreshadow our own potential for future illness, which draws us even closer.
A black and white photograph of stumps running alongside a narrow cement path. The stump closest to the foreground is black, indicating disease. The rest are white, as though freshly cut.
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Color photograph of the very top of a gravemarker, surrounded by warm sunlight and summer grass and flowers. The top of the stone says "MOTHER".
A photograph of a white feminine person in a doorframe. They are barefoot, wearing a blue and white striped shirt-dress and holding a hairbrush, having just pulled it through their long brown hair.
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Erasure Poem reading: it is morning/and your spirit lies/underneath this tree/in a dream/beneath your face/i see your mother's/feel, and yet be still/go forth and live/for what else/opens the eyes of the flowers?
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A black and white photograph of a graphic of a human spine, encased in an arch-topped shape.
Color photograph of water churning in the Hudson River.
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T H E   W A K E 

( E X C E R P T )

My mother in law’s death is a ferry wake in the Hudson River, churning our lives into a froth, returning along the same path again and again; there are calm and quiet moments in which we are undisturbed by her absence, but the presence of the ferry pushes water into the Atlantic or eddies it to the floor of the river. It resurfaces as the natural movement of the water, continuing in perpetuity with or without the ferry.

Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad facem. 

( Now  we see through a glass darkly, but then face-to-face )

A black and white photograph of a white person's hand reaching out to touch a cherubic face made of stone.

     

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A black and white photograph of a white 6-month-old baby wearing a floral top and a bow, sitting behind a metal headstone. The headstone has a vase on top with multicolored gerbera daisies in it. A white hand is coming into the frame on the right hand side, only visible up to the wrist.
A color photograph of a person looking through translucent blue curtains, seen from behind.
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Erasure Poem reading: flowers/ bright blue / goldenrod is dying fast, /fragrant/without a sound of warning/red applies lie/in piles / all the / white winged seeds are / still / the hills / said softly / i know not/ at sunrise / what bird is heard
A black and white photograph of two electrical poles bound together with a metal x; one with a painted white x on the lower portion.
Black and white photograph of a wedding picture from the 1980s in a silver frame, on top of a dresser.

DEAR JOAN,

            I’m writing to introduce myself. I am marrying your youngest daughter Alice in forty-eight days, on the date of your 35th wedding anniversary, which shares a date with my parents’ 35th anniversary.

            At our bridal shower, your siblings and my parents each gave us a holiday decoration of some kind, since a month after the wedding we will celebrate our first Christmas as a married couple. This Christmas is also the 25th anniversary of your final Christmas on earth. We are trying to make plans to be in Texas, so that we can visit you where you are buried. I hate to put it this way, but I am excited to meet you there, even if you are not there.

            It is strange to talk to you rather than about you. I have known your face for several years, and we sometimes joke that I wake up next to it every morning. It is strange to know that I have seen you at your sickest but never heard your voice. I mourn you every day even though I never met you, but I like to think I know you a little. I think your laugh was probably like Alice’s, a rich and musical giggle. I wonder if you hated going to the doctor like she does – but maybe she gets that from Walter.

            I know that you would be proud of the person she has become. She is sensitive and kind. She thinks about you every day, but I think you know that already – she thanks you aloud when we hit a string of green lights in the car, and takes a friendly cat as a sign that you are there.

            We spent a few weeks trying to figure out how to invite you to our wedding. There is the empty chair, the scrap of fabric from your dress, your rings that Walter kept. But Alice felt too much pressure, too much weight from wearing your rings. Ann had an empty chair at her wedding, and Alice did not want to make Walter sit next to an empty chair all over again, something that had been devastating to her as the maid of honor. Ann and Alice agreed between the two of them that they wanted to keep your dress whole; that it was important to them both to keep it as it was when you wore it.

Ultimately, our invitations to you are quiet; they are in the stephanotis floribunda that will sit on our sweetheart table, in the photographs of you on your wedding day that will attend the wedding on their own special table.

            I have so much to tell you. But I think it can wait for now.

 

                                    Love,

                                                Keavy

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A color photograph in which a landscape can be seen behind a severely underexposed and backlit person.

RISD Grad Show 2020

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