Public performances at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery

Artist in residence Laila J. Franklin will be presenting her Spring 2022 Run of the Mills residency project “Grief Objects.” On March 11, Boston Center for the Arts will hold a first performance cycle, a reception, and then the second performance cycle. The show will run from March 8-13. According to Boston Center for the Arts, the project is a multidisciplinary gallery walk and performance, “an invitation to enliven and reconsider the ways we engage with the various waves of grief that seem to engulf us so frequently right now. [Viewers] are invited to explore a collection of personal objects — physical and digital — that have been archived in grieving processes over the last 3 years in a space activated by live dance and sound performers.” The performance was developed in collaboration between Kate Gow and David Dogan.

Boston Center for the Arts offers a description of how the show should inspire viewers”

“Grief Objects” is the catharsis of dusting off that box that has been hiding under your bed for the last year or the one in your grandfather’s attic that has gone untouched for decades. Why do we hold onto these objects? Why do we organize? What is storage versus an archive? How do the objects of grief constantly object to grief? When do they become gifts?

“Grief Objects” seeks to hold space for grief, longing, and disarray while objecting to our traditional, cultural aesthetic assumptions of grief and the (perceived) excess that comes with it.”