Real Grief | Potential Grief

Real Grief | Potential Grief by Sydney Porter Williams Exhibition Run Dates: 06.26 – 07.24 Grief has a long reach. Real grief lives in my body, as an intense weight on my chest as a lost loved one’s song loops in my mind. Potential grief took root in me through generational trauma, inherited before I had words for it. I conceptualize generational trauma as a desperate hand gripping my arm, ever-present and controlling. Inherited grief and the patterns left by abuse can keep people enmeshed in a family system long after the source of harm is gone, shaping identity in ways that are hard to see and harder to separate from. This installation holds what remains. I work with closely cropped photographs of hands from generations of my family. These gestures are difficult to categorize as either loving or controlling, but they carry the weight of substance abuse, loss, and cycles of harm that move through the people I come from. The sound weaves together songs and voices of my family over time, filling the space with what is cherished and what is feared to lose. A childhood crib overflows with textiles preserved across generations, and a holy water jar from a Last Rites box contains remnants of an early pregnancy I lost years ago. Medication bottles line the walls, lit from within like votive candles, and a canopy of embroidered flowers hangs overhead, at once sheltering and shrouding the contents of this installation. Real Grief | Potential Grief explores how experiences of loss can create a constant anticipation of future grief, when that loss has not yet occurred. It moves between what has been lost and what might be lost. It traces how grief, both real and anticipated, shapes the self, while documenting the slow formation of an identity that is no longer fully defined by what came before.

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