LOVER is a video, sound, and sculpture installation introducing emergent works by Leah Piepgras. Moving towards “a new mythology for restoration and healing”, the show invokes reverence for nature in response to recovery processes, embodied sensory experiences, and the poetics of erotic love. In LOVER, Piepgras deepens her connection to sunlight, a source which tethers us to the cosmos and grants our survival. Studied scientifically as both particle and wave, light presents dualities that pass through us, calling into question our physical being. LOVER’S hypnotic video projections echo this quality. As particles dance, humans entwine, sprawl, and reach, and a wanderer treads barefoot through streams, each body exists doubly as a touchable form and as mere light. 

– Stace Brandt, Curator

Leah Piepgras on the origins of LOVER:
When I was at my sickest with cancer treatment I got an email from a choreographer in LA. It was the kind of email invitation that I dream about– she loved my work and wanted to think about a collaboration. I was too sick to respond for days, but that email was a beacon to me. It made me feel seen and– though I was in no shape to work– yes, I wanted to collaborate and, YES, I had an idea.  

Every day for 6 weeks I rode in the car to Boston to have radiation. Everyday I watched the woods scroll by punctuated by the glorious sun; flashing and strobing deep brightness into my mind and heart, pulsing through my body in a cosmic kiss.  I fell even more deeply in love with the world: the joy of pleasant physical sensations in my body, the feeling of holding objects made by my hands in my hands, the feeling of touching rocks, trees and other people.

The machine that gives the radiation treatment is a marvel. You are positioned with tattoo markers and siting lasers on a table that floats in space via a long arm. The head of the laser is also in an arm that is able to rotate around your suspended body 360 degrees. The room is dimmed and your team is in the room next door. The whole thing takes about 9 minutes and doesn’t feel like much of anything while it is actually happening (burns and sickness are cumulative). The head of the machine rotates around you one way and then reverses. The whole thing feels very planetary: precise arcs scrolled around you with your immortal cancer being burned away. You can see the shape of your cancer being projected through part of the equipment that they call the leaves: tiny needles moving in and out to shield or let through the laser light based on scans of your body, all while rotating. 

It is very specific– the shape of cancer being traced in light, shooting through your body to the core, trying to protect organs and bones that are cancer free. The machine makes a deep humming and grinding sound that is the aural version of the shape of your cancer. I found the sound to be amazing and liked the idea of space being shaped through sound and light. I was starting to think about how this sound was also a signifier to me, my body, to have cell death and rebirth. The reason cancer is so insidious is that it doesn’t die on its own, unlike other cells that die and are reborn in a cascade throughout your body as a normal regenerative process. I wanted to record the sound, so one day I left my cellphone on video and  secretly left it on the floating table next to my leg. I was starting to think about making a sound piece with it. What I got from the recording was a shock to me: I got the sound but on the actual video I got the whole universe shooting past in particles of light as if accelerating through a star field.  This was the beginning of my thinking about Sun Lover as a new mythology of restoration and healing and the start of my video work.