Jake Preval

Haiku For A Honey Girl is a poetic response to the early HIV/AIDS crisis, which Preval experienced as a teenager growing up in the 00’s solely through the pages of secondhand paperbacks.

Eclipsing the tragic exaltation of the coming out novel, this period of queer cultural history crystalised in prose was characterised by a collective grief, anger and dark humour. The characters that populated these stories became conduits to a time ‘before’ and an entry point into a contemporary queer identity.

Informed by curator John Davies’ notion of ‘feeling backwards’, Preval re-enters these narratives and unpicks their impact in the present. Collapsing memory, displaced nostalgia, literary space and objects into strange new forms Haiku for a Honey Girl attempts to memorialise the role fictional characters can play in constructing meaning in our lives. Oscillating between the makeshift and the monumental the work proposes a series of sculptural strategies for mourning the loss of these characters and attempts to create a temporary space for their remembrance.

IMAGES | Jake Preval, Haiku for a Honey Girl (detail), 2016, C-Type Print | Images courtesy of the artist.

HAIKU FOR A HONEY GIRL

Haiku For A Honey Girl is a poetic response to the early HIV/AIDS crisis, which Preval experienced as a teenager growing up in the 00’s solely through the pages of secondhand paperbacks.

Eclipsing the tragic exaltation of the coming out novel,
this period of queer cultural history crystalised in prose was characterised by a collective grief, anger and dark humour. The characters that populated these stories became conduits to a time ‘before’ and an entry point into a contemporary queer identity.

Informed by curator John Davies’ notion of ‘feeling backwards’, Preval re-enters these narratives and unpicks their impact in the present. Collapsing memory, displaced nostalgia, literary space and objects into strange new forms Haiku for a Honey Girl attempts to memorialise the role fictional characters can play in constructing meaning in our lives. Oscillating between the makeshift and the monumental the work proposes a series of sculptural strategies for mourning the loss of these characters and attempts to create a temporary space for their remembrance.

- NIKOS PANTAZOPOULOS