Semaphore Love Letters
Heather Lyon
SEMAPHORE LOVE LETTERS is an ongoing series of movement and flag based video and public performances in Maine, France, Portugal, Italy, and the Republic of Georgia; a declaration of love and lament to water in all forms. Semaphore is a system of nonverbal coded communication using flags held in specific positions to represent letters that then spell out phrases often traversing vast distances. The mylar ‘safety poncho’ speaks to the urgency of this critical moment, both ecologically and socially. Though useful against cold and heat, this garment does nothing to protect us from the effects of emotional catastrophe, or the damage of isolation and social rupture.
“I am calling to you, my beloved, across these sublime spaces. I am declaring my love to the mountains, and to the sea, to the unknowable in myself, in you, and all that is.”
Semaphore Love Letter – Alps filmed by Mark Lyon | Semaphore Love Letter – Isle au Haut – filmed by Luke Myers | Semaphore Love Letter – Meribel filmed by Leif Lyon-Miller
Artist Bio
Heather Lyon is a performance, video and installation artist born and working in Maine. Combining her interest in the meanings of materials (ranging from rebar to sequins to milk to ash) and the question of the human body, she investigates relationships and the ways in which we negotiate longing, loss, desire, and vulnerability. She holds a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has recently been exhibited and performed at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine, TEDx Dirigo, Portland, Maine, The Danforth Gallery, University of Maine Augusta, “The Picnic Pavilion” a parallel project to the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, Zaratan, Lisbon, Portugal, The State Silk Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia and at Artisterium 10, Tbilisi, Georgia, for which she received an Emergency Artist Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York.
Exhibition photography by Carolyn Wachnicki.
