MAGGIE CHAMBERS

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Close Your Eyes For Me

Hand-Cast Salt and Luzianne tea
01:03:14
2021

Video Link

Close Your eyes for me is a durational video piece in which viewers are made witness to the evolution of hand-cast salt text as it dissolves under the pressure of amber-colored fluid. Both linguistically liquid and materially desiccated, the video is in constant contention with itself – charged with visual seduction and subtle violence.

A common Lutheran Sunday school trivia fact, the singular breath, Jesus Wept (John 11:35), stands as the shortest verse in the English translation of the Bible. The video work Close Your Eyes for Me, calls upon my own intimate knowledge of this piece of text and a longing to acknowledge the unnamed, feminine loss that too, wets those transparent, linen pages.

The words SHE WEPT, hold the history of their own tedious construction; each letter free formed with salt in the space of my hand. With each pinch, as I smooth edges into form, I welcome their granular presence into my skin; willing them to absorb my own watery excess.