Angela Jooste

so when the light

comes, stay

far into the day

that stretches

close to dark

a constellation

of minutes, hours

that evaporates

in a heartbeat

where all that’s

felt, collapses

into a single touch

just stay

long into the light

of day

Sarah Sze, Shorter Than the Day, 2020

Mixed-media installation

Terminal B, LaGuardia Airport, New York

just to look above

and wonder

how such distant

stars in a sheltering

sky are woven into

the fabric of space

from the beginning

of time, and how

seeing this celestial map

each night anew

is to gaze back through

eons at this now

ancient light

Gianni Caravaggio, Lo stupore è nuovo ogni giorno(Astonishment is new every day), 2008

Installation made from aluminium, talcum powder

this relic from the future (alien?)—

on the other side

of knowing

what is

can only be imagined

or believed

Adrian Villar Rojas, Poems for Earthlings, 2011

Site specific sculpture, destroyed

Clay (unfired), cement, burlap, metal, wood

Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

how to be a bird

at home

in these trees

perched on the edge

of a teetering nest,

with the sea on the wind

the paper rustle of leaves

and branches bowing

as if nodding in prayer,

some believe birds

are spirits of the dead

those still tethered

but kept aloft in flight—

navigating a space

of above and below

of what is known and not—

yet there is freedom, not death

for an airborne soul

unbound,

as fragile as any life

balanced

between chaos and peace,

and that takes just a flicker

in time—

a breath-pause—

to cease

to exist

Tadashi Kawamata, Tree Huts in Bruges, 2015

Triennale Brugge, site specific installation at the Bruges Beguinage

in the darkest heart 
of a forest, a turret of stone 
with a pool of black water 
at its centre, flecked 
by impossible stars
sunk deep into 
the bowels of the earth—
they were ordered 
to tie their own noose 
as a serpent wound its
way around a deadened tree
limbs jutting into the bricks
high enough to hang—
the officers with the death’s head
skulls on their lapels, dragged 
the prisoners from their cells 
to an overhanging platform
their black uniforms 
cast in shadows, draped
with sinister wings
by the oil lamps’ flames
while high above a bird pecked
a hammering rhythm, marking 
time with the drops of rain
falling into the watery depth beneath
each sound carved into the silence
awaiting them, their breath 
sucked by fear as the vice 
of death, that twining serpent
ever closer, the ropes finally
hung, waiting to swing
and they took one last glance upward, a futile escape the tower open wide to the sky
above, yet what they finally saw was the light mirrored dark 
and endless below

Rebecca Horn, Concert in Reverse (Das gegenläufige Konzert) 1987/97
Multi-part installation at the Zwinger municipal tower, Münster 

Sculptur-Projekte in Münster 

words

evaporate

breath to dust

and love

as truth

never has to be

spoken

or marked

James Lee Byars, The Perfect Love Letter is I write I love you backwards in the air, 1974

Performance, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brüssel

with just the sky above

below the earth is gaping

not knowing the way ahead

so that I’m left waiting, suspended

for what, I’m not sure

maybe to simply cut loose

and let myself

fall

Louise Bourgeois, Spiral Woman, 1984

Galleria Borghese installation, Rome (2024)

words, inspired

divine, arc through eons

shaped by different tongues

migrating as stories told

and prayers incanted

in whispers, at times

stifled as heresy

yet printed boldly

in faded ink

those words still live

inscribed in heart

and soul, the very essence

of being, belief

always to be heard

never to be erased

Chiharu Shiota, Lost Words, 2017

Multi media installation

St. Nikolai Kirche, Berlin

and the book

weighs heavy

the knowing

too immense

to carry

indefinitely

although

she’ll try

Anselm Kiefer, Women of Antiquity, 1999-

Château La Coste in Aix-en-Provence installation (2023)

a glimpse

that’s all it took

through a telescope

and the boy fell—

into the sky

flying sidereal

having gazed at

the stars all his life,

longing to reach

the edge

of a boundless

universe, impossible

but he was lost

in the love

of wanting

all mysteries

to be unveiled

before his eyes

Wolfgang Tillmans, in flight astro (ii), 2010

Digital pigment print

where is the way

when all paths

shatter

how to navigate

this sea

of shards

and the centre

out of reach

in a labyrinth

obstructed

no beast

to encounter

only the history

of your own

scars

Claudio Parmigianni, Un Mer de Verre Bris (A Sea of Broken Glass), 2009

Le Collége des Bernardins, Paris, France

roots so deep

they can never

be burned,

even as the trees

turn to ash

it nourishes

this land and

the promise

of life, always

Mohammed El Hajoui, Ardna, 2024

Installation featuring olive tree and ash