Waiting rooms are “non-places” — a place of living – between the world before my dad’s diagnosis, and the world after he passed away.

“Non-places,” a term coined by Marc Augé, refers to transient spaces where humans are connected in a uniform manner and where no organic social life is possible. In hospital waiting rooms, we are connected only by circumstance – we are here for someone else. It does not allow for new connections. Rather, we remain anonymous and lonely in a room full of people. The “non-place” is defined via the power being taken away by the uncertainty and lack of control.

Throughout my dad’s cancer journey and during the endless waiting, I observed the people around me, and realized I was watching grief unfold in real time.  

Even when I wasn’t in a waiting room, it felt like I was. I was either sitting next to my dad’s bed in the hospital, or sitting next to him by the window at home, or sitting in class worrying because I wasn’t with him, or sitting by his hospital bed in our living room during the last weeks of his life. These spaces felt like being back in that waiting room. Sitting, waiting, for answers or for the worst.

In that non-place of waiting, it felt like time was standing still even though I knew it wasn’t. After all the waiting, the end of my dad’s life shattered my world. How can something so momentous be so still?

These structures are my attempt to create art that represents the enormity of my grief. I physically worked through the size, shape, and texture of each stage of my grief – encapsulating my experience with clay and punctuating it with glaze. My intent is to create a space to process, reflect and feel. To give the still enormous weight of grief a physical form that others can rest with even if it's for a moment.