Tired feet, retreating is an immersive installation that reimagines ceremonial performance, nationalism, and embodied ritual through painting, projection, sound, and sculpture. The work was presented in What Lovers Do, a group exhibition featuring the RISD MFA Painting cohort at The FLAG Art Foundation. The presentation at FLAG allowed Tired feet, retreating to unfold as an autonomous spatial experience within the broader dialogue of the exhibition’s thematic framework.

In February 2024, I was selected by the Brown Arts Institute to participate in the William Kentridge & The Centre for the Less Good Idea residency in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded by William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace in 2016, The Centre aims to “find the less good idea” by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary arts projects. Over two weeks, I joined the Brown community in engaging The Centre’s key methodologies—provoking and surfacing narratives embedded in archives and histories through a device known as Pepper’s Ghost.

Named after John Henry Pepper, who popularized the technique in 1862, Pepper’s Ghost is a theatrical illusion that uses a half-silvered mirror to produce a hologram-like figure. The Centre expands this image-based technique to generate illusory performative and narrative encounters, bringing live physical and musical performance into dialogue with video installation. The projection in Tired feet, retreating draws from documentation of my live performance created in collaboration with The Centre. In this performance, I introduce puppets of my own making alongside an archival photograph of the Wagah border by Ed Grazda, which serves as a central projected image.

Installation comprising oil painting on canvas, masonite, and muslin; charcoal and found fabric on wood cutouts, wooden handmade gates, sound, video performance (05:22), projection, carpet, and hardware, 9 x 12 x 8.5 feet