Time Ward

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, April 2001

Metal bed frame and bedside table, boxspring, plaster bandage mattress, IV stand, blood bag, TV, video, chair, wall clock

Time Ward evokes illness and loss of life in a large-scale tableau installation. The work draws from the vernacular of contemporary western medicine, confronting the viewer with a somewhat theatrical experience of death. This socio-critical work presents physical aspects of human existence to draw attention to society’s ideas of mortality. Contemporary, vintage, fabricated, and commercially available props occupy a large yet humanly empty room.  A metal bed frame holds a fabricated plaster mattress that maintains an impression of the human form although the body is absent. Blood drips onto the floor from an intravenous blood bag hanging from an IV stand, the scene repeated on a TV monitor next to the bed. A single empty chair is witness to these events. The quiet of the room is broken only by the sound of the wall clock as it ticks in rhythm to the dripping blood, signifying the slipping away of time and the leaching of life, seemingly undeterred by human intervention.