Sacrum

Sacrum is an exploration of heritage, of what we transmit in moments of silence, of what subsists in spite of absence. It’s the story of two abortions that took place 41 years apart.

Juliette Treillet

Sacrum

In dusty cardboard boxes I find photographs of my mother stretching a bow. They were taken before my brother and I were born. I also find a picture where her body, under dappled light, ressembles à prayer, and another where, her back turned to the camera, you could mistaken her for me.

I search these details, I deconstruct her gestures and positions. A hint, a sign, there’s something there, somewhere.

One day, my mother told me, Sometimes I think about it and I tell myself that your brother wasn’t the first.

I also think about it sometimes and it fills me with emptiness. An emptiness with no counterbalance, an emptiness with no fill.

In Japan, the different steps of archery have names. After extending the string, there is Kaï, union, and Hanare, separation. What exists in this in-between that has no name?

Sacrum is an exploration of heritage, of what we transmit in moments of silence, of what subsists in spite of absence. It’s the story of two abortions that took place 41 years apart.