Neva Elliott is a writer and artist from Dublin, whose art centres on her personal experience to create pieces that are about – in her own words -“loss, grief and healing”. Elliott’s work chronicles the process of grieving the loss of her husband and her father. Her exhibition Notes on Being Human ran from the 13th to the 29th of September, and was held at the Pallas Projects/Studios in the Liberties, a short walk from College Green.
Next-door to the exhibition is a primary school. There is a deafening sound of children playing as we walk along the path that leads to the gallery and studio space. We ring the intercom and are let in by a gallery assistant, who seems to be just as much a part of the exhibition as the exhibition itself. He greets us warmly, but seems to be affected by the melancholic air of the exhibition, talking to us about the sparse descriptions of Elliott’s work as we move from piece to piece. The exhibition is held in just two small rooms, and there is a thin wall separating the two, that rattles loudly as I brush past it. The whole exhibition is visible from one corner. A cloaked, headless figure looms beside an arrangement of glassware. A stash of blankets hides in the corner. The walls are bare, and painfully white. It feels almost like a violation to be there; and once we have left, we describe it as feeling as if we had stepped into a morgue.
I feel myself laden by the air around me – the grief distilled and projected into these artworks is palpable. It says on the Pallas Projects website: “The primary audience for the work is the artist—she is providing herself the time and space to heal through making.”. Featured in the exhibition are imprints left of real lives, including a shirt of Elliott’s husband with the sleeves rolled up and glass-topped pins stuck in them because she “couldn’t bring herself to unroll them,” and a string of jade beads made from ceramic earthenware, which immediately caught my eye. The artist says that while living in China, her husband was given a string of jade beads from a friend, a traditional gift for protection, luck, and health, and he always wore them. She says that in China he also developed cancer. The exhibition is completely devastating. It is not made for the person who is not experiencing grief – this exhibition carves a space I would only feel comfortable in while grieving. Afterwards, I think to myself that when I do experience grief, I will think back to this exhibition and be comforted by its intensity. Grief is lonely and it can feel like nobody else understands the pain and permanence of it. Art about grief is important, not to show non-grieving people what grieving is like, but to show the grieving person that they have company in what can feel like a silent, and forcibly private journey.
On the walk out of the exhibition I hear the noise of children playing again. I feel a haunting contrast between this noise, and the resonance of the space I have just left, enveloped by the presence of the dead. Life and death are thinly veiled from each other.
Since I encountered this exhibition, I have thought many times about a James Baldwin interview where he says “You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important.” Notes on Being Human lets the grieving person see the enormity of their feelings reflected. It gives importance to their grief. In a world that keeps moving all the time, time stands still with these artworks. Grief is given a space while it is still ongoing. The artwork displayed is a continuous work in progress, mirroring the lifelong process of grieving and trying to find a way to heal.
