Hole in the Sky, (2025)
Hole in the Sky #1–#12, 2025. UV prints, repurposed vinyl billboards, grommets.
#1–#2: 203.2 × 157.5 cm | 80 × 62 inches. #3–#12: 116.8 × 91.4 cm | 46 × 36 inches
Hole in the Sky is an archive of community and loss in the wake of Hurricane Dorian.
There has long been the expectation of a next storm, past the horizon. However, warming Atlantic Ocean temperatures promise more violent hurricanes, which gather momentum faster and reach their most destructive intensities more often. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Abaco Islands, a small chain of out-islands in the Bahamas. It was a precursor to severe, climate-crisis-influenced hurricanes.
For generations the Abacos have been a home to my family, who have weathered many hurricanes. Nevertheless, Dorian was different. The storm strengthened considerably as it approached, leaving no time to evacuate, even to nearby shelters. Then everything went silent. For days, the islands were torn by wind and buried under the sea.
I spent endless hours on local, private Facebook groups reaching out and searching for information among lists of survivors. As headlines passed, thousands of us continued to look for answers. I began to screenshot what I saw online to keep a record -should it be of value to someone looking for a loved one. It was not until four days after we lost contact with my mother that we learned she had survived.
Many passed away. Many washed away. The stories of those who remain are harrowing. In the years since, what began as the rebuilding of the Abacos became the displacement and loss of community.
Much later, I recognized that my archive from Dorian was an intimate record of found imagery, only accessible through lived experience. In considering the legibility of an image and how circumstance can inform evidence of occurrence, I arrived at the idea of treating the imagery with seawater.
I printed the archive as mirrored images in dye-based inks and soaked the prints in seawater from the Abacos. Read through the back of the paper, the images are anonymous but not impersonal. The seawater that ruined them is the water that came ashore.
I then reprinted these obscured images onto a material familiar to sites of climate crisis: the backs of repurposed vinyl billboards. Often used for temporary repairs after natural disasters, they make consumerism and the pressures responsible for the climate crisis visible in remote regions, such as the Abacos, which bear the burden and consequences of change.
There has long been the expectation of a next storm, past the horizon. However, warming Atlantic Ocean temperatures promise more violent hurricanes, which gather momentum faster and reach their most destructive intensities more often. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Abaco Islands, a small chain of out-islands in the Bahamas. It was a precursor to severe, climate-crisis-influenced hurricanes.
For generations the Abacos have been a home to my family, who have weathered many hurricanes. Nevertheless, Dorian was different. The storm strengthened considerably as it approached, leaving no time to evacuate, even to nearby shelters. Then everything went silent. For days, the islands were torn by wind and buried under the sea.
I spent endless hours on local, private Facebook groups reaching out and searching for information among lists of survivors. As headlines passed, thousands of us continued to look for answers. I began to screenshot what I saw online to keep a record -should it be of value to someone looking for a loved one. It was not until four days after we lost contact with my mother that we learned she had survived.
Many passed away. Many washed away. The stories of those who remain are harrowing. In the years since, what began as the rebuilding of the Abacos became the displacement and loss of community.
Much later, I recognized that my archive from Dorian was an intimate record of found imagery, only accessible through lived experience. In considering the legibility of an image and how circumstance can inform evidence of occurrence, I arrived at the idea of treating the imagery with seawater.
I printed the archive as mirrored images in dye-based inks and soaked the prints in seawater from the Abacos. Read through the back of the paper, the images are anonymous but not impersonal. The seawater that ruined them is the water that came ashore.
I then reprinted these obscured images onto a material familiar to sites of climate crisis: the backs of repurposed vinyl billboards. Often used for temporary repairs after natural disasters, they make consumerism and the pressures responsible for the climate crisis visible in remote regions, such as the Abacos, which bear the burden and consequences of change.