Who Broke the Sky, Who Fell Through (femme ghosts)
Amaryllis R. Flowers, 2019
Performance and digital photography
Mirror, sequin and environment

This work was developed during my time at the Fire Island Artist Residency in the summer of 2019. Fire Island is known to be a historically Gay place. What I didn’t know before arriving, is that it’s also where people who were sick during the AIDS pandemic went to die. Older gay people who survived described returning to the island like visiting a graveyard. This tiny strip of sand is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean- another unmarked graveyard for the murdered and drowned people captured in the trans Atlantic slave trade.

I wanted to make a femme haunting that made flamboyantly visible these invisible stories. A sparkling ghost trembles above cracked mirror tombstones planted in the dunes and reflecting a fragmented blue sky. The deep blue reflection shifts and collapses as graves mirror an unfixable, ever changing firmament. This ongoing performance will inhabit other such places for years to come.

“In Who Broke the Sky, Who Fell Through, the artist alludes to death as she appears as an iridescent pink sequined ghost standing on a Fire Island beach. Mirrored tombstones emerge from the sand among a ground full of tall grass. The artist plays with light and texture, as sculptural elements in the piece reflect glistening pinks and blues, honoring the dead during a mystical sunset and heralding a new future on the horizon”. Excerpt from Calling In the Spirit, an essay by Kiara Cristina Ventura for UTOPIA issue of Aperture Magazine, 2019.