Grief has a long reach. Real grief lives in my body, as an intense weight on my chest as a lost loved one's song loops in my mind. Potential grief took root in me through generational trauma, inherited before I had words for it. I conceptualize generational trauma as a desperate hand gripping my arm, ever-present and controlling. Inherited grief and the patterns left by abuse can keep people enmeshed in a family system long after the source of harm is gone, shaping identity in ways that are hard to see and harder to separate from.

This installation holds what remains. I work with closely cropped photographs of hands from generations of my family. These gestures are difficult to categorize as either loving or controlling, but they carry the weight of substance abuse, loss, and cycles of harm that move through the people I come from. 

The sound weaves together songs and voices of my family over time, filling the space with what is cherished and what is feared to lose. A childhood crib overflows with textiles preserved across generations, and a holy water jar from a Last Rites box contains remnants of an early pregnancy I lost years ago. Medication bottles line the walls, lit from within like votive candles, and a canopy of embroidered flowers hangs overhead, at once sheltering and shrouding the contents of this installation.

Real Grief | Potential Grief explores how experiences of loss can create a constant anticipation of future grief, when that loss has not yet occurred. It moves between what has been lost and what might be lost. It traces how grief, both real and anticipated, shapes the self, while documenting the slow formation of an identity that is no longer fully defined by what came before.

@sydneyrebekah

Bio

Sydney Porter Williams is a community-based teaching artist who utilizes art as a form of transformation in classrooms and communities. She is the Community Arts Research & Education (CARE) Program Director and an instructor in Art Teaching at the University of Utah. She also served as Artist in Residence at the Neilsen Rehabilitation Hospital, contributing to research on arts-based approaches to quality of life for stroke survivors. She works closely with the University of Utah’s Arts & Health Innovation Lab and has published on mixed-methods and arts-based intervention research in Methods in Psychology.

Porter Williams holds a Master of Fine Arts in Community-Based Art Education and an Honors BFA in Art Teaching, both from the University of Utah. She has extensive experience facilitating community artmaking and collaboration, and was named the Utah Art Education Association’s Preservice Educator of the Year in 2022. She was also awarded a Utah Museum of Fine Arts grant to co-create an interactive exhibition with her students, on view from 2024 to 2025.

Her pedagogical practice is interwoven with her multidisciplinary studio work, where she creates installations, sound, and performance that engage memory, identity, and transformation. Her scholarly interests include art for social transformation and artmaking as a dialogical and therapeutic practice. She has exhibited in regional galleries and museums, including the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Bountiful Davis Art Center, and the Springville Museum of Art.