I explore the connection between the cemetery and the construction site through materiality. Both involve digging at some point, one is honouring the past and one is getting rid of the past, honouring the future. 

Stone is a simple and common material that can be used to make individual headstones or the buildings we share. Whereas newly constructed buildings may be demolished, rebuilt, or abandoned in the future, these buildings are monuments to the future. In a cemetery, the stone becomes a memorial to death; on a building site, it symbolises the renewal of life and the possibilities of the future.

The gravestone is a monument to the individual; the building is a monument to the collective and civilisation. The graveyard and the construction site show the different scales of human existence. Life and death suggest the transience of our individual existence, the construction and fading of architecture emphasises the continuity of the material culture created by human beings, and the stone is a more enduring substance than the existence of individuals and civilisations. There are three scales involved: the transience of individual existence, the continuity of civilisation and the relative eternity of matter.

I made an installation that itself resembles a monument, a monument that, composed of vivid labour, ever-changing land, and ancient matter, demonstrates the different scales of existence: individual life, collective civilisation, material. The monitor cycles through scenes of workers digging, the images blurring the line between laying the foundations for the living and digging the final resting place for the dead. The monitor is housed in the quiet gravel and soil quarried from the site. In the mounds of soil, some of the stones are organic from volcano and some are man-made and come from concrete. The mirrors then prompt the viewer to contemplate their own existence. I encourage viewers to reflect on the role of these spaces in our daily lives and to think deeply about our relationship with the urban environment.

“We are young as a species, even younger as a civilisation, and, like reckless children, initiate processes we cannot control.” —Agnes Denes