Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time For Love? Sharon Hayes

Video (7:10): An in-depth visual description of this work by multimedia artist Sharon Hayes. An Art in Focus video (2022) by Chris Timms, Tate, London, UK.

Description of an art work from the Loves series by Sharon Hayes:
‘Five loudspeakers stand facing five posters, reciting letters to unnamed lovers. The letters are highly emotional and intimate fraught with despair desire and longing. She speaks about her sense of helplessness during the unfolding invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the trauma and dislocation of living in a moment of war as a U.S. citizen and feeling dislocated from her daily life.

The letters do not specify the sexuality of the writer or their lover. For the performances, however, Hayes has said that she ‘butched myself up even more than usual because I didn’t want the love to be read as heteronormative.’ – Chris Timms/Tate 2022

[The copyright of the video above remains with the original holder and it is used here for the purpose of education, comparison and criticism only.]