Grief Encounters

Grief Encounters came about five years ago in response to a series of losses. I was contemplating the role of the arts, as I often do, in providing a means to find meaning and to help navigate some of the complexities of being human.

Grief and loss is something that touches us all at some point, sometimes multiple times, be it the loss of a loved one, of identity, of health, of community, language, or work. We live our lives in the wake of a series of losses.

For me, the arts have always been a way to help illuminate something about the precarious and fragile situation of being human. In my twenties, when I was unwell for a period of time, I used to listen to this one piece of music. Within this piece, there was an exquisite, powerful voice, and every night I would put my headphones in and listen to it. This music, in some ways, was a compass, a way of navigating something. It reminded me of beauty. It became a place, a sanctuary, a shelter. In many ways, the arts can offer us hope.

Grief Encounters came about from a desire to create a contemplative space, to engage with the theme of grief, offering an opportunity for people to come and witness these unfolding tableaux that appear and disappear. This embodies the idea of both presence and absence, ghost-like images. Somehow, the work feels like a dream, which often reflects something of our quality of life at times.

One central image that has inspired this work is of a Japanese artist Keisuke Yamamoto who made a lithograph image called (Light time silence 32,2021) of a chair in an empty space facing the light and billowing curtains. This image became a central orientation for Grief Encounters. In a world that seems to be increasing in speed, violence, and chaos at times, the work aims to be a space somewhere between ritual, performance, and a contemplative environment where people can be with themselves. It is not so much about entertaining, but about providing a context for reflection. It aims to provide space in various ways, in its tempo and pace, there is an invitation to slow down, which for many of us is not always easy. In that slowing down, something happens in our perception, something may open in our capacity to not only be with what we see and feel, but also in how we sense ourselves and others around us. Thus, the work becomes, or can become, a little mirror to a certain degree – a hiatus, a moment of suspension between the moment we enter the door and when we leave.

I think loss is something that many of us find difficult to face, because life is inherently a series of losses. However, perhaps the recognition that loss can be a generative force for our living, means that only by being in relationship to loss can we find out what really matters.

While it is difficult to recognise the weaving of grief through our lives, I sense it also makes our living more precious, and perhaps somewhere we can find the determination to live in a way that is as meaningful as possible, in the face of knowing that things disappear.

Like any artwork, it must always walk this tightrope walk, where I attempt to attend to aliveness wherever it shows up: in relationship to the people who come in, to my own self, to the music, to these ever-changing tableaux that appear and disappear. Improvisation is inherently about searching, it is inherently about not knowing and it is inherently about uncertainty. The work itself, strangely enough, is like dust.

In the end, there is only memory, and the traces in the body of how we have lived and who has lived in us.


Cai Tomos

This is a conversation

It’s a way of being together

A way to say something

To share something

A kind of ritual

The kind that kids do without thinking

A kind of remembering

Yes, a remembering

It’s about joy too

Of course it is.

It’s about a longing

And searching for a way forward somehow

It’s a song

And a prayer

A meditation on loosing it

And

It’s a dance

Definitely a

Dance

My name is Cai and I am welsh artist. I go by the pronouns ( he/him) . My work in its essence is about movement, in all it forms. I tend to move between different art forms that reflect different aspects of my practice, but at the core I’m interested in the imagination, and its relationship to our bodies. Im interested in healing and health too, and how the arts help us to find what we often don’t know we were looking for.

The arts give us a way to speak our own language that often has no words, but it’s our own unique way of expressing ourselves in the world. I'm interested in community, and how the arts support togetherness, a way of being together that is a force for good.

I believe in transformation. The extraordinary and every day ordinary transformations that the arts can support us with. I feel the creative spirit is in everyone, it may come out in dancing, cooking, poetry, organising your kids pack lunch, drawing, helping your neighbour or gardening. In a way I’m interested in what makes us feel alive. My work involves being with others and looking for that aliveness in whatever small or Large way it shows up.I have worked in Care homes, theaters, psychiatric Hospital, living rooms of peoples’ houses, street corners. I work one to one with people in hospital in bed, by work I mean, we find ways of being together where curiosity has the space to emerge as it want to.

We humans are interdependent creatures, we need each other, for our individual and collective growth.

We come in so many shapes and sizes and different ways we see and experience the world, both our joys and pains. The arts more than anything help us listen, and by doing that, by really listening, we share something of our common humanity, of being together in the world in that moment, and it’s these moments that help us find and create meaning as we go on through our days