The shade can be a beautiful place to hang out when the light’s too strong was an installation I made in 2022 for Zero Gravity – A Landing at The Occasionnale in East Sussex. Set in a summer house, its central focus was an apple tree, a variety local to the area, which was installed with a surrounding ring of slip-tied Polaroids fluttering on the ends of velvet ribbons. Each image held a memory of my stepfather, who died the year before in the next village, and I carved his favourite phrase into the tree bark – a wound, like grief, that the tree will continue to grow around. I wanted the work to evoke a Clootie Tree and the Pagan practice of tying rags dipped in holy water to trees so as to heal ailments – and hopefully my grief.
Tash Kahn 