DOCUMENTING POLITICAL OR SOCIAL MOMENTS. Lewis makes use of anxious, electroformed fragile birdlike kinds as evocative stand-ins for associates he misplaced to AIDS.

The virus itself is represented, pure and inviolable as each the clasp of the necklace––binding the hyperlinks—and as a compartment or locket to include no matter will match… Via graduating the dimensions of the skull-like kinds—which evoke medieval plague masks—the sequence represents each the losing of the person as a result of illness and the proliferation of the illness from individual to individual to distant individual. The inside of the locket incorporates a quote from the 19th-century French poet Gerard de Nerval: “Ou sont nos amoureuses? Elles sont au tombeau.” (“The place are our lovers? They’re within the tombs.”) —Keith Lewis