Hieroglyphics, 2026

I find myself mute in the face of loss. Words are the first to dry up of meaning. I have asked myself countless times before, what is the use of these monuments and memorials in bronze and stone, when the memories that they represent are ever so fleeting? State-sanctioned memory is itself a kind of loss, since the vessel loses its own specificity to embody an ideal.

Before I left France in 2011, I picked up an assortment of books from the local bookstore. One of them was Mémoires d’Hadrien by Marguerite Yourcenar. I was particularly struck by the Roman emperor’s irreconcilable grief over the passing of his young lover, Antinous who drowned himself in the Nile as a sacrifice for his love. Hadrian erected a city in his name and created a cult of worship. Antinoopolis is a rich city in the desert, surrounded by an extreme and eternal ring of poverty. The emperor lavished it with temples, triumphal arches and marble colonnades laid out in a grid work. Hundreds of statues of the new god, Antinous lined the main avenue: the Mondragone Antinous, Antinous as Osiris the Egyptian God of the Afterlife, the Farnese Antinous… The obelisk of the Pincio bears hieroglyphic inscriptions detailing his funeral ceremonies.
Did the emperor measure the streets to the scale of his lover? Could he have calculated the amplitude with which his lover’s name was sung and his oracle read for the next five hundred years? He sought only to recognize in the streets, in the faces, the complete features of his lover. 

Hierogylphics- the Apotheosis of Antinous, 2025. Glass etchings, panels of 8x10 and 11x14, custom brass display 144” long

​Photo credit: Emily Dzieweczynski

My subsequent returns to Paris are driven by the search for my lost relationship to the city. Neither citizen nor immigrant, the ten years that I have lived there are ghosts unable to find  stable resting grounds. I look to the monuments of the city for old and new connections and find that it is also built on a mythic past that is not its own. In 2016, I stood by the flames lit for an Unknown Soldier, under the Arch of Triumph, looking down the wide avenue of Champs Elysees. It led to a carrousel wheel. A bold obelisk aligns with the center of the wheel. Its gold tip blinks in the distance. This series of objects inscribe into the physical landscape of Paris, a symbolic sphere where the lineage of military grandeur can be traced to ancient civilizations such as Greece and Egypt. The Champs Elysees translates to Elysian Fields, the final resting place for heroes, demigods and the virtuous.

Hierogylphics- the West Bank of the Nile, 2025. Glass etching on window, 76 x 34 inches

​Photo credit: Emily Dzieweczynski

In 2022, I visited Etretat, a seaside town in Normandy known for its white chalk cliffs. Along its shores,
​I encountered a vertical bunker, detonated from its base by Allies’ bombings. It now stands facing the ocean, a pyramid of some sort. It seems to be an accidental embodiment of the violence that had occurred at the edge of the nation.

In midsummer of last year, I received news of the passing of a friend from my adolescence.   Since my departure, silence has grown between us. Since his departure, I have tried to fill in the emptiness with words. I have amassed my collection of sites, strings of phrases and mythical references to erect, not a monument, but the many moments across time and geographies that could hint at the mystery of his destiny.  

Paris is the city of our youth, which we crafted in our own image. During this winter’s visit, his absence fills the city streets. Without him, the once ideal city closes itself and ceases to be a place I can return to. The emperor’s incessant journeys are fueled by the desire for wholeness.

Sealogs, 2025. Writing and collages on paper folded into an accordion, placed on tinted acrylic shards

​Photo credit: Emily Dzieweczynski

Semiotic Stones, 2018
Carved and polished air-dry clay, dimensions variable

​Photo credit: Emily Dzieweczynski