chalk/dust by Dr. Adelina Ong continued…

 This is an excerpt of what participants wrote in the Zoom chatbox:

 

I'm always here to listen. 

I’m here for you. You are not alone. 

What can I do to help you? 

I am reaching out, creating a home wherever.

It’s ok to not feel perfect in your grief. 

As days pass, I hope you find comfort and support in the people that surround you and the amazing memories you have created. 

I will see you soon. 

You can get through this. 

This too shall pass. 

You are not alone. 

I am here for you. I am here for you. 

I am here for you. 

 

I decided to create chalk graffiti poems inspired by the participants’ words of comfort and support. Subverting the implicit ‘I was here’ performed by the graffiti writing that remains (Whybrow 2011, 114; Sinclair 1997, 3), these chalk poems end with 'I am here for you, 爱'. I have chosen to write these chalk graffiti poems next to trees that have endured the three lockdowns. 

Fig 1 u r not alone.jpeg
Fig 2 u r not alone.jpeg

Figure 1 (left) and 2 (right): ‘You are not alone. I am here for you, 爱’. Photos by author.

 

Washed away by the rain, all that remains of the chalk graffiti poems I wrote are memories of place, formed by passers-by who might have chanced upon these chalk graffiti poems as they paused for rest under a tree.

Traces of chalk remain - capturing the essence of death-in-life, an understanding of death as coexistent and inseparable from living (Nishitani 1982, 93).

Fig 3 to endure.jpeg
Fig 4 to endure.jpeg

Figure 3 (left) and 4 (right): ‘To endure is the permanent capacity to begin again. I am here for you, 爱’. Photos by author. 

 

These are traces of care - reminding me of the frontline workers who maintain their enduring, everyday care for community wellbeing at the expense of their own. There are many who have laboured, unrecognised and unappreciated, for our survival and safety on the frontlines as supermarket workers, cleaners, transport workers and delivery workers.

In May 2020, a report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies found that ‘Pakistanis, Black Africans and Black Caribbeans are over-represented among key workers overall’ with one in five Black Africans of working age employed in health and social care (Platt and Warwick 2020, 12-13). There are no reports on the race of COVID-19 fatalities on the frontlines of food supply and distribution, cleaning services or transport. Their unrecognised labour of care is marked by histories of inequality that manifest in death when their absence goes unnoticed, their deaths ungrieved by the communities they have served.

Note: For further elaboration of chalk/dust (2020 - 2021) as a place practice that I have developed to create counternarratives of Chineseness amidst the violent racist attacks directed at Chinese, East and Southeast Asian people in the UK during the pandemic, please read ‘Traces of Care: chalk/dust’ in, Lim, B. and Ho, O. (eds.) Critical Approaches to Community Arts (2021) Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Fig 5 here to listen.jpeg
Fig 6 here to listen.jpeg

Figure 5 (left) and 6 (right): ‘I am always here to listen. I am here for you, 爱’. Photos by author. 

Author of chalk/dust

Dr. Adelina Ong

Twitter: @adelina_ong