In the anxiety of distancing myself from family and friends, I made a series of letters that I sanitized and disinfected before sending. Many of these people are not online anymore. Many more will be unreachable since they have secluded themselves with family. Many have passed in the interim between sanitization, shipment, and arrival. Here’s hoping my paper screams into the void to get to them. In my daily life, I go outdoors briefly. I disinfect, I keep my distance, I think of them, I miss them. I wish I could do more. I hope they are ok. I hope I hope. I hope…I…

I geared up in sanitization gear and using a hand pump full of a 50% alcohol solution, I began sanitizing letters written in India ink that then were mailed to recipients around the world. The ink splotched from the alcohol as if from tears. Each one a response to loss and longing, each letter a call for more. The letters traveled around the globe and arrived at different times or were lost altogether.

I performed this work at a public docking port at Templehof in Berlin, Germany as a response to the onslaught of emails and text messages I received in the early days of the pandemic. The worries from friends and family about my safety made my replies feel hollow and perfunctory. Instead of thinking of a new normal, I began thinking about the previous normal; before my internet access at seventeen, before Facebook in my pocket and video calls scheduled like laundry. I began wanting to be physically present for them and for them to know I meant it.

The closure of art spaces and community places, first in the EU and then elsewhere in the Americas led to performances being cancelled or postponed. The one constant that remained was my community scattered across the globe and my only want was to hug them all. This work is an attempt to do just that. The distance traveled and time taken for each letter to arrive mirrored the ways in which my body would do just that for those recipients. The words inscribed in them are the whispers that we say to one another as we embrace and take in the smells and sights, the warmth and familiarity.