I kept looking down and finding shifting white sands all over my feet, familiar, yet feeling as though it was covering what I was looking for. Suddenly, when I wanted to give up and dunk myself in a nearby refreshing pool, I found the place.

This is when I spotted rows of stacked blocks that were being deconstructed, each being carefully jackhammered away in a uniform fashion until nothing was left, like Tetris rows decimating in place. I was immediately sure that this was the place, and simultaneously bereft that it was being destroyed. I wanted it to stand forever – as a monument to my pain, or to my history. It was being destroyed and I felt destroyed. I soon found the exact room but it was next to be imploded. I grabbed the sign that marked the entrance – a rusted letter that started to crumble in my hands as I saved it from the wreckage. 

I just wanted something – some token of this place. I tried to take photos of the lamps as they were coming out of the rooms. I felt that it needed to be recognized and remembered. Someone had to know.

—

The works in At An Angle are a way of documenting past moments of trauma or pain, and are glimpses in the fleeting feelings that often give way to larger impressions that become memory. I wanted to build mountains out of molehills, and create a testament to the unknown suffering that people endure every day, and the ways that it can harm, change, or scar them.

Nicole Geary, 2017