I made this art installation as a part of the Tacoma Light Trail, a free walkable/driveable Trail of light art in downtown Tacoma, Washington from December 31st - January 14th, 2024. The Tacoma Light Trail uses light art to bring light to dark times, to lift up diverse voices and bring the community together through things we all share – truth, hope, justice, peace – symbolized by light. https://www.tacomalighttrail.org/
Someone reminded me this winter solstice that though it might seem like the sun is returning to us during this time - the sun is actually always shining somewhere. As the days get longer, it's us who are returning to the sun.
This stuck with me as I began creating this year's Tacoma Light Trail installation, which centers on sunflowers - known for standing in community and following the sun across the sky with their faces. As symbols, sunflowers are often depicted brightly alongside memes that can border on toxic positivity. I've had trouble in the past resonating with them for that reason, especially as a PTSD survivor.
At the height of my grief and trauma, I remember feeling like grief is a dark ocean. I was sinking deeper and deeper into depression, and I had this belief that eventually I would hit some kind of bottom, which I could then push against to come back up to the surface.
But I kept sinking. And at some point, I realized there actually is no bottom; the darkness is infinite and it has an undertow. At some point, under the tremendous oceanic pressure, even bubbles no longer reliably go 'up' and it's hard to even tell which direction the surface is. This is a dangerous place to be; I realized that if I ever were to reach the surface again, I would have to actively seek it out. I would have to interrupt my ruminating throughts and propel myself forward. In that sense, I would have to seek out the light; it wouldn't find me by itself. This is actually how I found Buddhism; I joined a local Buddhist temple and learned to use mantra as a way to interrupt ruminating thoughts and bring myself back up to the surface to breathe.
I've noticed something similar in friends and family who have experienced war trauma - admittedly a very different kind of trauma than my own, but with somewhat similar patterns and we've learned from each others' experiences. At first, I worried that akin to toxic positivity, they were bypassing their trauma and seeking the light in such a way as to never truly heal. But after experience the absolute depth that PTSD can have, I understood their approach better, and found that what they are actually doing is staying rooted in the context of their trauma AND seeking light so that they can alchemize the pain within themselves.
There is a similar pattern for grief; I heard that 'grief is love with no place to go,' and in last year's Light Trail installation I explored the concept of how the depth of grief is measured by the depth of our love. In this installation, we have sunflowers that are rooted in darkness but also intertwined in community, seeking the light together to the point where they are almost generating the light themselves. They have mycelial networks through their hands, feet, and roots, and their love flows through them into the dark depths becoming stars. In short, this installation is about the metabolization of love, grief, and darkness, and how we can learn to develop a tropism toward light the way sunflowers do, seeking it out and thus navigating to the surface of the soil, the surface of the water, and the surface of our grief for a lifegiving breath.
The Symbolism
In the 90's, one of my good friends founded a dance troupe for Vietnamese refugee children so that they could have a place to stay connected to their culture and heal from war trauma together. She told me they had chosen to name their group "the Sunflowers" because sunflowers are always looking for the sun; anyone who has seen a field of sunflowers can confirm that they stand as a group, their faces following the sun across the sky. It's a beautiful metaphor for how we must stand together, stay rooted, and seek out the light.
This year, I was sitting with her and another good friend who is from Ukraine. She told me that she had recently started a similar group in Tacoma for Ukrainian refugee children, and that they had also chosen to call themselves "the Sunflowers" because sunflowers are such a strong symbol of Ukrainian identity and resilience. In the group, a child psychologist (herself a refugee from the war in Ukraine) leads children in activities that help them work through their war trauma. This includes things such as playing with popping balloons so that they can associate loud popping sounds with play and joy again instead of gunfire and bombs. These Sunflowers are seedlings that are finding their way through the dark soil toward the warm sun where they can bloom together.
All of this came together to inform my idea for this year's installation, and I worked closely with the creators of this group to ensure I was choosing Ukrainian images and symbols with the right context.
Here are some of the symbols that informed the design of this installation, with descriptions of how they are incorporated in the captions:
The outline for the main figure in my installation is loosely inspired by the Independence Monument in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kyiv. Tall and angelic, the central statue is of Berehynia, goddess of protection and destiny in Ukrainian mythology. Her billowing sleeves look like angel wings as she holds a guelder-rose branch, which symbolizes the sun, moon, and stars (as well as blood, family, and roots/ancestors). .
The stars in the center of the sunflowers are reminiscent of the stars people hold for колядка, the Ukrainian tradition of caroling during the Christmas season:.
