Haiku 2023–332

empty reliquary

prompts internal dialogue

about my values

— —

What do we treasure? What do we venerate and revere but keep locked in a box away from all? What happens if it all comes spilling out in the open?

These questions welled up inside me after visiting the Tai Shani’s MBR exhibit this past weekend at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. While I’m far from being an art critic, I do fancy myself at least an amateur writer and thus feel qualified enough to comment on how the exhibit made me feel. If forced to use but one word, I would choose ‘unsettled’ but would hasten to add ‘in a good way’ as a follow up. Since I did not see the movie that the exhibit is based on, I lack some of the contextual clues Shani has offered and may be completely missing her point. That being said, her empty reliquary challenged me to ponder what I treasure in life and how I keep it.

Taking a prompt from another exhibit at the CAC — ‘A Permanent Nostalgia for Departure’ — I honor what Shani’s work prompted inside me by offering a work of my own.