Cheryl Sorg (Cambridge, MA), detail from mixed media installation, A Missing Peace, found magazine pages and archival tape, 5 ˝ x 7 feet, suspended from ceiling. Playing off of a Haitian short story of loss involving a quilt and photographs, this piece features 3100 white squares that when backlit reveal 3,062 candle images—the latest number of total lost in the September 11th attacks.


Cheryl Sorg (Cambridge, MA)

The Missing Peace

Mixed media installation of found magazine pages with archival tape
5 ˝ x 7 feet
2002
Courtesy the artist

A story I first read over five years ago, a story that affected me deeply all those years ago, has resonated particularly powerfully for me since September 11th. The story-"The Missing Peace" by the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat-takes place in Ville de Rose Haiti, just after the latest in a string of violent coups. A woman has traveled to Ville de Rose in search of her mother, a member of the "old regime," whom she believes was one of the many killed in the outbreak of violence. She travels with photographs of her mother, showing them around with the desperate (and futile) hope of finding her. It is a powerful and moving story about love and family, loss and living in a world devoid of peace.

The title is a wonderful play on words. To hear the title spoken aloud, of course, one would at first assume the word to be "piece"-referencing simultaneously the lack of peace with which these people live and the idea of the quilt, a key symbol used in the story. The woman searching for her mother is constructing an actual quilt from remnants of the family's history-her baby bib, a bit of white lace from her mother's wedding dress. Intending the quilt to serve as a memorial to her mother, she assembles the pieces, in her words, "for posterity". The quilt as a symbol evokes many things-love, bed, sex, family, warmth, comfort and safety-and this symbol, both literally and figuratively, comes apart in the end: "Loosely sewn, the pieces on the purple blanket around her shoulders were coming apart."

This piece is constructed of a grid of photographic images of candles, covered by a grid of squares of white. The candles, as does the color white, serve as a symbol of peace, as well as of mourning. The piece, when not back-lit, appears as a solid, clean, minimal white grid. When illuminated from behind, however, a field of thousands (3,062, to be precise - the number of people whose lives were lost that day) of lit candles is revealed. It is a work about, simply, the desire for peace.