The Cella Was Empty (La Cella Era Vuota)

The Cella Was Empty by Michel Deguy

Emptiness as it is called
But enshrined
Placed in secrecy within the hollowed arch
Would be the part’s absence for a whole
And removed from sight
The renouncement but peacefully hushed
Of possible symbolization

In Michel Deguy’s poem “The Cella Was Empty”, the cella is a corporeal space — a present body, Emptiness, placed in secrecy within the hollowed arch. The arch supports a liminal space that enshrines emptiness. In Deguy’s cella absence is a part held resonantly within and bound to the potential of becoming, of possible symbolization and gesturing towards to the detrital perspective confronting Walter Benjamin’s Angelus Novus. Within the cella’s space is at once loss and reconfiguration and the tempting spirit of the imagination that provokes the process of new forms.

The above has been constant within the lineage of recent works and specifically the previous exhibitions Form of Absence. It is part of the work. It does not promote method as much as constructing a lens for construing origins and experiencing outcomes.

The poetry is to be excavated as it lays below the surface, as do bones below the skin, transmuting a body’s morphology to an atmosphere of constant resistance, forming form; as does the cellular nature of a room in defining the identity and anonymity of a city: the mold to the molded, betwixt – antidosis.

This quality of being dual is ever present and a means for generating transformative design processes. The exhibition presents images and spatial talismans of artifacts and spaces of habitation that are in the process of reconfiguration; situated and primed for reuse.