Suspended, Slightly

2021
UV print on perforated canvas banner, UV print on mirrored film
Banner: 90 x 300 cm; Flag: 90 x 150 cm


Presented at SLL, a collective artistic project space and atelier in Lisbon. A banner and flag were made to hang from the existing flag poles from the building’s former life as ‘SLL LAPA’, a neighborhood association and recreation center, to communicate a new message to passerbys, a literal and metaphorical reflection on time and perseverance in the midst of Lisbon’s second wave of the pandemic.

Spanning the rear two poles is a banner which pictures a sculpture of the head of Janus, Roman God of entryways, thresholds, birth and death, beginnings and endings, in which two faces share the same head, but oppose one another, facing in opposite directions: one towards the future, the other the past.  The image stretches out the midpoint, suggesting an extended, ‘suspended’ present hanging overhead. The flag reads ‘As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty’, taken from the title card of Janus Mekas’ film of the same name.