Installations
Empty Skies
The viewer enters a room with a grid of 24 beds. Each bed is made out of foam core, measures 60 x 29 inches, and is covered with a white sheet and a pillow. On each pillowcase is a hand-painted image of an extinct bird. The lower part of the bed is draped with a white banner, which is stenciled with the name of each bird and the date of its last sighting.
There is enough space between the rows for a person to walk through. The deepening visual experience evokes a refugee camp or a hospital ward. It is the environment that is unwell, and the beds become symbols for lost species that now exist only in photographs and in our psyches, dreams, and memories.
"A visitor to Kane's avian hospital-turned-mortuary walks through a stillness as disturbing as the "empty skies" of the title. The occupants' names and Kane's meticulously painted likenesses are all that remain of them now, and the viewer can't help but think that his or her own footsteps, loud in the hushed white room, were part of what silenced their once beautiful voices forever." Ellen Pall
The Helmet Project
Fifty steel helmets hang from the ceiling just below eye level in the configuration of a circle. They are spaced far enough apart for a person to walk through the circle and examine them intimately. Each helmet is covered with the original handwritten notes of foreign correspondents. The text is partially legible beneath the painted maps and other iconography, but the legibility is not as important as the authenticity of the notes, which in some cases have been saved for decades by the journalists who wrote them.
The overall feeling as one walks through the space is one of reflection. The helmets have been used in battles, and the journalists' notes record the despair of people trapped by war, poverty, and political oppression. Ultimately, the helmets encircle the visitor in the journalists’ quests for truth, honoring their ability to bring us stories from embattled places on the earth.
Participating journalists: Ward Just, Jacki Lyden, Geraldine Brooks, Tony Horwitz, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Jeri Laber, Nelson Bryant, Richard Dicker, Deborah Amos, Kirk Semple, Ivan Watson, Benjamin Joffe-Walt, Gideon Levy, Danny Rubinstein, Asra Nomani, Neal Conan, Tom Gjelten, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, John Feffer, Martha Raddatz, Dana Priest, Nora Boustany, Jamie Tarabay, Sherri Mandell, Jackie Northam, John Burnett, Steven Erlanger, Chris Hedges, Barbara Demick, Will O'Leary, Scott Canon, Kiran Khalid, Ethan Bronner, Jane Perlez, Ray Bonner, Caryle Murphy, Jim MacMillan, Steve Mumford, Hannah Allam, Kimberly Dozier, Sudarsan Raghavan, Ellen Knickmeyer, Anthony Shadid, Charles Sennott, Jonathan Randal, Lynsey Addario, Scott Simon, David Finkel...
ArtPrize, Sidecar Studios, Grand Rapids MI
Sprint Flatiron Prow Art Space, NY, NY curated by Cheryl McGinnis Projects
"The unexpected juxtaposition of an anonymous military helmet and deeply personal memorabilia provides a profound comment on the universality and the particularity of war. Each helmet with its unique ephemera and calligraphy, offers an abbreviated portrait of an individual reporter; together, encircling the viewer, the Helmet Project becomes a monument to the hardships, the losses and and the absolute necessity of war reporting." Geraldine Brooks
"The notes that journalists take in the field are the bond of trust with their sources. They are intimate and full of secrets. Cindy Kane has used these scribbled sentences to create an inspiring and beautiful work of art that explores the private and public dimensions of our profession while highlighting the risks that journalists take to tell the stories that need to be told."
Joel Simon
Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists