you will die

Airtex banner, material, halloween masks, carabiners

2025

Exhibited at Bene Culture.

Exhibition text by Emalee Beddoes 

Ever since people have made art, we have made objects to keep evil at bay. Apotropaic symbols, etched into beams, drawn on thresholds, or hidden within walls, served as quiet guardians against unseen forces. Daisy wheels, for instance, were scratched into medieval buildings to confuse or trap malign spirits, their endless circular geometry acting as a spiritual snare. 

In similar ways, early Halloween customs carried protective intent. During Samhain or All Hallows’ Eve, when the veil between living and dead was thought to thin, people wore grotesque masks and disguises to repel wandering souls. These rituals of masking, transformation, and fear offered both protection and catharsis - ways of confronting mortality through play and performance.

In this work, those ancient instincts are reimagined. An Airtex mesh banner, ordinarily used to conceal the chaos of construction sites, forms the backdrop for a velvet-embroidered warning: you will die. A memento mori and a modern charm, the piece transforms the practical fabric of urban repair into a psychic shield. Black embroidered daisy cast a spell of protection over a fringe of mass-produced Halloween masks of modern-day folk demons: vampires, werewolves, Pennywise, and double Michael Myers.

Part medieval apotropaic device, part shop display, part 8-bit end screen (GAME OVER), the work explores mortality, loss, and the often-absurd rituals we construct to contain our fears. Created at a moment when the artist was returning to personal, it embodies the tension between endings and renewal, between the protective mask and the self beneath. The installation becomes a transitional object, a way of processing emotional change: a shrine to the ghosts of past work, and to the imagined selves we build, dismantle, and build again.