Artist Statement:

 

Trust is a conceptual belief based in morality, in which those who are trusted are deemed reliable from the perspective of the person placing trust in the other. Consequently, trust can be broken when a trusted individual acts in a way that is undesirable from the perspective of the trustor. Don’t Break My Trust is an investigation of the individual experience of trust in which anonymous voices discuss what happens when trust is experienced, given, and broken. This work is relational, therefore it requires the viewer to activate it by entering the ‘circle of trust,’ a space created for the viewer to sit in contemplation, as well as by engaging with the audio portion of the work by putting on the provided headphones. Viewers are trusted to respect the space created for them and the auditory confidences provided, while they are also asked to trust that the space will accommodate them. Excluding the metal ring from which netting cascades, the ‘circle of trust’ is made entirely from soft materials. Light is then projected onto the outer netting of the ‘circle of trust’ to support the intimacy of the interior space, as well as aesthetically captivate the viewer within. The audio, which was retrieved from interviews on trust as a part of the research for this work, inserts the viewer into sections of conversations that were held in different locations with different anonymous participants. Listening creates the sensation of being an eavesdropper on what could possibly be intimate, sensitive, or private conversation, with the goal of driving the viewer’s contemplation of their own trustworthiness and method of trusting others.