Hanna Orion

Within Where the Grief Settles the spine emerges not merely as a structural form that holds bodies, but as a vessel and poetic archive of grief, memories, and the passage of time. There is grief within me, but grief does not only belong to me, as there is grief in the landscapes, grief in the sediments. Memory, like sediment, accumulates in layers, with some fragments buried deeply and others resurfacing when the tides and climate shift. Just as the body holds trauma and time, so too does the landscape, with layers of sediment and erosion echoing cyclical processes of loss and renewal.

 

My practice unfolds within this tension: between holding and releasing, softening and solidifying, between grief and the forms through which it releases.

With each of these works, I aim to explore and embody different segments of grief and release. Some pieces emerge from a deeper state of mourning, while others move through the process of letting go. If the physical body is no longer here, where does it go? Does something as a spirit exist? And if so, where does it float to?

I believe that by entering into grief we can begin to loosen it out of the body, including all types of (non)human bodies. I imagine it like a pebble dropped into water: the impact creates ripples that expand outward. When we acknowledge grief, it can begin to ripple through and eventually out of the body, softening, releasing.