Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Floor 6

Born 1941 in Fort Dodge, IA
Lives in New York, NY

This work’s title, Lacunae—meaning blank spaces or missing parts—suggests a rupture in continuity. Here, Mary Kelly starts with the calendar, one of the fundamental tools we use to imagine the continuation of time, and uses it as a framework for exploring what may be the most profound disruptions to our sense of it: the seemingly arbitrary fits and starts of aging and the passing of friends and loved ones. In some ways, Kelly treats these subjects with the neutrality of a documentarian—simply noting her own age at certain moments or her friends’ first names and their ages at the time of their deaths. She has also marked the days that follow using a methodical application of ash to create lacunae at the moments of loss. Together, the ash and the transparent vellum of the printed calendars invite the viewer to reflect on materiality as well as the body and its final passage or transformation.