The Between

Artist Statement:

In July of 2014, a single phone call split my life in two. My brother, Derek, had been in a car accident. At the hospital, doctors told us to prepare for goodbye. But goodbye stretched into nearly a decade. Though he would never again regain full consciousness, Derek survived in a vegetative state for nine years, suspended between presence and absence, life and death. Those years became a study in contradiction: the ache of loss alongside the quiet beauty of care, anticipatory grief next to illogical hope, love tethered to sorrow. When Derek ultimately passed away in the fall of 2023, the space he left behind was vast. And in that space, The Between was born.  

The Between is an exploration of liminality: the fragile territory between holding on and letting go, between joy and grief, between gratitude and pain. It invites you to sit within the unresolved, to feel what resists explanation, to map the divinity in the interplay of life. Each piece in the exhibit was created as I learned to live inside paradox, and to find will in uncertainty. 

For me, art became not just a practice, but a way of breathing through the unbearable. The materials, the process, even the mistakes, all became part of a conversation between grief and creation.  Over the course of two years after Derek’s death, I followed that conversation wherever it led, choosing intuition over control, honesty over polish. I invite you to step into The Between as you are. Let the work take your hand.  Perhaps, as we linger together in its contradictions, we’ll remember that the beauty of life and the pain of life have always shared the same room, and that compassion, for others and for ourselves, is what allows us to stay there. 

Xx,

Tay