Wes Bruce on Collide:
“Collide was a chance to explore the connectedness between joy and mourning, with the aesthetic in the space leaning towards the elements of mourning. Myself and the people I make art with (Emi Samuelstuen, family, friends, roommates, etc.) usually hold those darker elements of mourning a little closer to home and don’t show them so openly, but we decided to take this opportunity to grieve a bit with others providing a chance to participate. It was a chance to share something that is universal; losing something or someone you love and knowing something grows in the space of that loss if you face that black absence.
“Participants were encouraged to cut off a lock of their own hair, record something in their own life they needed to grieve on a piece of paper, then attach both items on the wall to collectively create a circle with the locks and words of others to fill in the black absence located on the other side of the room. It was a Victorian mourning tradition to take a lock of a loved ones hair to keep their memory after they died. It was a token for memory and grieving.”
All photographs by Marissa Parsons.
Spenser Little
