This installation is a dramatic tableau, like a gothic window display, taking up roughly 12 x 12 feet of floor space and 12 feet in height. Its almost melodramatic proclivities will be appropriately framed—and are affectively powerful enough not to be dwarfed—by the inherent drama of the industrial architecture of the Buffalo River Works. The installation already exists but has only been shown once, on one night in April, in my own private art studio.

A female figure (the daughter of the title), dressed in a later nineteenth century manner, stands before us. The historical style of her costume is offset by the harsh fluorescent tube lighting at the front of installation. As with the present cultural and economic reconceptualization of Buffalo’s industrial past, the past, present, and future confront each other in a standoff. Standing as if she has just reached the brow of a hill, the daughter confronts us too. But without a head, we are unable fully to read her expression. What is it that she wants? What next?

As is characteristic of my artistic practice, the materials of the installation are objects I no longer wanted but was nevertheless psychologically unable to discard. They are stuck between being loved and rejected and keep the audience suspended between attraction and repulsion. The dead tree behind the daughter blossoms with flowers formed from used sheets of yellow legal notepaper. And the woman’s dress is coutured from the artist’s own used face masks, accumulated over the course of the pandemic.

How is it that these things that we so long to leave behind, can nevertheless blossom? How is a resurrection possible from such abjection? We claim we want to move into the future. But this installation demands: not unless you bring along what you wanted to forget.