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Ali Feeney
How Long Have You Been Carrying Around That Moment?
2019
Video Documentation of the Performance & Video
How Long Have You Been Carrying Around That Moment?
2019
Video Documentation of the Performance & Video
Work Statement: I created the work How long have you been carrying that moment? to talk about this burden that we place on ourselves, the weight of guilt, loss, and labor. It is a video documentation of a performance, projected onto the wall, in which I am carrying a seven-pound, solid glass form which resembles a seed, over the mountain pass between Copper Mountain and Vail Mountain. My birth mother went to a small mountain clinic in Copper presenting with severe abdominal pains. Upon swift examination, the doctors quickly found that she was in labor and had to be rushed over to Vail Hospital which was a twenty-minute drive away. Up until this point, she had not known that she was pregnant and at that moment, everything changed for her. I think about how terrified she must have been and that I forever changed her life. I wanted to focus on that moment of realization and impact that it must have had. It was important to me to recreate the trek between these two places to pay homage to her sacrifice. I reenacted the imagined labor by carrying the glass piece to recreate my own perception of labor and document my burden as she must have carried for years after the fact. The hike was fifteen miles and took seven hours, one minute, and thirty-seconds to complete.
This performance retraced the path that my birth mother and I took together to soon go our separate ways. I wanted to experience the memory of that stretch of highway. My body ached and my muscles became weaker throughout the performance from the heaviness of the glass piece. I feel guilty for causing her both physical and emotional pain, for tearing into her body and heart. This work functions to both help myself overcome the overwhelming sense of guilt, the painful memories of my past, and to empathize with my birth mother in the best way I know how, through art.
This performance retraced the path that my birth mother and I took together to soon go our separate ways. I wanted to experience the memory of that stretch of highway. My body ached and my muscles became weaker throughout the performance from the heaviness of the glass piece. I feel guilty for causing her both physical and emotional pain, for tearing into her body and heart. This work functions to both help myself overcome the overwhelming sense of guilt, the painful memories of my past, and to empathize with my birth mother in the best way I know how, through art.
Artist Bio: Born in the mountains of Colorado in 1992, Ali Feeney is an emerging artist and educator. Feeney received her BFA concentrating in glass and sculpture from Alfred University in 2015 with honors. She then went on to receive her MFA in 2020 from the University of Texas at Arlington concentrating in Glass. She has been internationally exhibited in publications such as The Glass Art Society Student Exhibition as a Jurors Pick. Feeney travels extensively to pursue her passion for glass and has worked at a variety of institutions such as Pilchuck Glass School, the Studio Corning, Santa Reparata International School of Art, and the Chrysler Museum of Art.
