A Black Tie Affair

Created for Nuit Blanche in Toronto, A BLACK TIE AFFAIR was an installation, conceived as a generic sacred space, in the Fleishman Gallery at WonderWorks Bookstore.

 

Three hundred men’s neckties were sewn together and painted black. They cascaded from the ceiling to the floor, on which were placed 18 golden bowls filled with red liquid. Beside the ties and bowls was an elaborately carved chaise longue.

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Singers performed every hour from 7 PM until 7 AM.

 

As the night wore on, so did the age of the singers.

The first, Rachel Bullen, was eleven; she was followed by high school student Natalie Banka, then Elizabeth Morriss, Denise Williams, Ali Garrison and Paula Boma-Fischer, a dentist in her sixties. Each singer began her set with the spiritual, "There is a Balm in Gilead", and ended it with "This Little Light of MIne". Five of the singers gathered at 7 AM and sang these two songs in five-part harmony.

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"In the long “white night” of insomnia, of tossing and turning, of tortured thoughts and unresolvable conundrums, A Black Tie Affair provides an antidote of peacefulness and serenity."

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—Robin Pacific