Front Lines
-
Concept
Front Lines reframes the concert barricade as a space of care rather than separation. It looks at how music communities form in high-intensity, shared environments; where strangers become responsible for one another, even briefly. The work positions fandom as a survival structure, asking how songs, repetition, and collective presence can hold people through experiences like depression and anxiety.
-
Process
Hands are cast in plaster, some produced with 3D filament. Each hand is fitted with a handmade bracelet, inscribed with song titles, emphasizing touch, exchange, and personal attachment to music. The central stage is composed of a microphone, guitar, and platform to anchor the installation. White 2D barricades structure the spatial relationship between viewer, object, and imagined performer. A video component set to “Drag Path” by Twenty One Pilots weaves personal narrative into the physical space.
-
Experience
Viewers are placed both in front of and within the crowd, navigating a space that feels paused but charged with anticipation. The reaching hands create a sense of urgency and longing, while the bracelets invite closer reading. The installation asks viewers to recall their own embodied experiences with music such as how it feels to be held in a crowd, to reach forward, and to belong. Viewers are asked to consider how those moments extend beyond the venue into everyday survival.
Meraki Michael
〰️
Meraki Michael 〰️
“When unpredictability defines so much of my world, music becomes an anchor, proof that comfort can be consistent, steady, loud, and alive.”
Music As Medicine
What does recovery sound like? What takes the place of a cure when the prescription fails? How can a sound hold you together the way a pill never could? This installation lingers in the space between treatment and trust, between what’s prescribed and what’s found. It asks how sound can soothe, replace, or resist the systems meant to heal us. Here, music becomes both diagnosis and cure, an act of care built from noise, devotion, and endurance.
Loyalty to the Past with a Passion to the Present
Loyalty to the Past, with a Passion to the Present explores the space between devotion and transformation—between what we hold close and how it continues to shape us. Rooted in memory, repetition, and care, the project reflects on how the things that built us keep echoing long after their moment has passed. It’s a meditation on staying connected to what made us, and the enduring act of honoring where we come from.
