Nine Days/Heavy Heart

A Brief Walk Through the Installation.

Nine Days/Heavy Heart began as an experience in which I never intended to utilize in my personal work.  During the course of the latest body image battle, I photographed myself each day during a nine day fast.  These images served as a personal record as well as a daily excuse to rise from bed and face the day.  In the spring of 1996, months after the latest weight trauma, I chose to tell my story as a performance piece.  This was done live in and around the Boston area before becoming the cornerstone of the Nine Days/Heavy Heart installation. 

The first installation, simply titled Nine Days, was comprised of the video performance piece and the grid work of body, bedroom, and rose images.  I chose to create a small room (approximately four by eight feet).  Viewers entered the space, sat at my kitchen table covered with lemons (a basic ingredient of the fast), and were able to watch and listen to the video performance.  Mounted on the three walls directly behind the viewer were the grid images.  These were nine each over the course of nine days of my body from the front, side, and back, the bedroom as I moved my partner out, and the roses given to me for my anniversary.  A bare bulb and the light from the video monitor lighted the space.

In later installations, the exhibit grew.  The video performance, paired with the photographic grid, acted as the cornerstone of the installation.  As the viewer enters the space, s/he is confronted by the video and grid.  Along one wall are the dozen roses mounted in glass test tubes with the daily weights of each individual rose over a nine day drying period etched into the glass.  On a third wall is mounted a second grid of nine 20x24 inch photographs.  Each image is of feet on a bathroom scale documenting the daily body weight changes over the nine days.  Alongside this grid are three unique screen prints.  Each screen print is a graph: the first- recording body weight changes over the nine days, the second- recording the weights of each individual flower as it lost weight over nine days, and the third- recording the total room weight lost as my partner was moved out.

Two “Memory Boxes” are placed on the ground: each contained items collected during the three-year relationship. The first contained all the snapshots, and the second, all the memorabilia (ticket stubs, notes, etc.).  These items were weighed and their total weights were etched into the top of the sealed, Plexiglas boxes.  A soundtrack accompanies each box.  The first box’s soundtrack repeats, “I love her, I love her not.”  The second, “She loves me, she loves me not.”

In the center of the space is an organic shape reminiscent of a stomach.  This contains 155 pounds of lemons, the primary ingredient in the fast, which are allowed to rot during the exhibit.  The weight of this is etched into the surrounding concrete blocks that make up the shape.  One hundred fifty five pounds is equivalent to the artists body weight before the fast.  Surrounding the space are nine pounds of daisies, each labeled with “She loves me,” or “She loves me not.”  These are given enough water to live for one half the exhibit time.  Viewers are invited to take these flowers from the exhibit.  Those left behind, slowly dry.  The weight of these is etched into marble and is equal to the total weight lost over the nine day fast.

One final piece hangs in the space.  It is a deep blue painting on wood and covered with shellac.  Encased within the varnish is a single, yellow Valium.  The “V” shape held within the pill looks very much like a heart shape and giving the piece its name, Heavy Heart.  The net weight of .005 ounces is documented in the lower right hand corner.