Petah Coyne

On day thirteen of the quarantine, I contracted the Coronavirus. Spending long hours in bed, falling in and out of a nightmarish sleep, I dreamt about nothing but art. Visions clouded my head; my thoughts were intermixed with images of sculptures I had made, and ideas of ones I plan to create. Several pieces stood out vividly in my brain.

I saw so clearly an incomplete sculpture in my studio – “Marguerite Duras”. A towering work adorned with hanging black spheres of various sizes, each covered and reshaped with rubberized wire and placed carefully next to one another. But in my dreams, these spheres swam next to a landscape of luxurious fabric swirls, reminiscent of a monumental sculpture I recently completed, titled “The Doctor’s Wife.” These swirls were made of masses of rich velvet, cascading right and left, rising and falling to create mountains and valleys, interrupted by patches of bruise-colored waxed flowers. A woman with a thick mane of hair stands amongst a field of wire that has been encrusted in black sand. Velvet is pouring out everywhere. How to distinguish the source of these images? Is it a fever dream or are these just memories? With each breath the spheres begin to reverberate through the air like the fire in my lungs. In my drug-induced sleep, they eventually collide with the swirls of fabric, and then magically fall, raining down its surface and rippling over endless hills of lush velvet.

I vaguely remember awaking to total darkness in the middle of the night; not a sound could be heard. Weeks were lost to me. My lungs and throat were constantly on fire, but at least I could breathe. I knew within my heart that the only way to recover was to lie still in bed and focus all my healing energy on my lungs. Nothing else. As I began this process, my burning lungs and the darkness in my mind repeatedly prompted images of yet another recent sculpture, “The Memory Police,” titled after a novel of the same name. I came to think of this work as a headpiece that can be worn for protection; protection from not only the onslaught of the novel’s titular police who threatened to rob us of our memories, our histories, our past, but also from this virus. After three days of dreaming of this headpiece, my lungs finally cooled and my throat extinguished. I could sit up, sip soup and live life again - I was one of the lucky ones.