NICOLE BARAKAT

you reverberate

New work by Nicole Barakat honouring & remembering Candy Royalle.

Candy Royalle reverberates.

When I return to the place she last performed, I feel her voice and energy reverberating. Her poetry still hovers in the corners of the room.

Sound never disappears, it is omnipresent and eternal.

The longest reverberation is in my heart, in our collective heart.

This is an offering to all who love and miss her deeply.

This is for all who love and miss someone who no longer dwells among us.

Remember to listen and you will find them again.

When those we love transition out of this realm, we find ways of coping.

These stitches and these words of hers, are my medicine.

In creating this work, I sit with Candy, holding and being held by her. I open up and listen carefully. She is still here beside me. She sends signs. Sometimes big queer-double-rainbows-across-the-sky-and-flocks-of–black-cockatoos signs. Sometimes they’re smaller, lone-currawong-calls-in-the-stillness-of-4am signs. Without these reminders and connections, the grief of losing Candy would be unbearable.

Eleven days before she transitioned to the realm of the ancestors, Candy asked me to mentor her for an exhibition she was planning at AIRspace Projects.

When she left us on 23 June 2018, I knew I needed to honour our friendship and creative bond.

I asked for her guidance when naming this exhibition. I opened her book A trillion tiny awakenings and the first phrase I saw was you reverberate and it was perfect.