Artist veronique d’entremont presents a public artwork that reimagines their own family legacy of bipolar disorder and suicide through the veneration of human ancestors and non-human kin. Through their devotional sculpture and poetry, d’entremont crafts a personal mythology that seeks to reclaim agency and find liberation amidst patterns of intergenerational trauma. A tapestry bearing a selection from the artist’s poem, “Hail Holy Queen: A Novena To The Bees” provides the ground for an empty clay shrine at the top of the hill. At the foot of the hill are a series of sculptural receptacles, bearing purposeful statements written by the artist as a form of invocation. Viewers are invited to write their own responses or prayers and insert them into openings incorporated into the sculptures.

In the video below viewers are invited to watch Their Body Became an Offering a ritual that guides participants through a practice of letting go—offering up parts of themselves that no longer serve them, so that healing can enter the new space left behind.

“I have found that personal myth-making and storytelling are powerful tools to help make sense of difficult events in the past, and to heal from patterns of intergenerational trauma. While we can’t change painful events in our past, we can change how we feel about them—and that’s the first step to moving beyond them.”
-veronique d’entremont