The Heart of the Wise

"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning." — Ecclesiastes 7:4

This exhibition begins with the acknowledgment of a paradox: grief is both universal and deeply personal. Everyone experiences loss. Yet we're often left without adequate spaces to honor that experience—especially spaces that don't demand we move through mourning on someone else's timeline, that don't require religious frameworks, that welcome the full complexity of how grief actually feels.

The House of Mourning creates that space. Drawing on the visual language of medieval mourning—ritual, religious iconography, gothic aesthetics—the project engages these traditions through a contemporary, queer, and neurodivergent lens. We're not recreating historical practices. Instead, we're asking what secular sacred space looks like now. What rituals serve us when we can't rely on inherited belief systems? How do we honor grief's weight while remaining accessible to people from all backgrounds?

The exhibition features mixed-media works by visual artists exploring loss through visual reconstruction, expressionist gesture, assemblage, and figurative approaches. These pieces don't offer comfort or closure. They hold space for lament as a necessary precursor to healing, transcendence, and transformation. They acknowledge what medieval mourning understood: sometimes the most important thing we can do is stop and witness grief itself.

The Experience

Enter a darkened sanctuary. Mixed-media installations anchor the physical and emotional terrain, each piece exploring different facets of loss and memory. The work doesn't prescribe how to feel—it creates room for whatever you're carrying.

A generative soundscape envelops the space—composed of ambient textures, layered field recordings, and tonal poetry. This evolving sound environment doesn't dictate mood. It holds space. It breathes. It provides acoustic architecture for contemplation, offering support without demanding specific emotional responses.

At the center of the installation, you're invited to participate. Approach an altar-like interface and offer a simple statement of what you're mourning. Your contribution becomes part of a living, data-driven visualization and soundscape. The system doesn't just archive your words—it identifies resonances with other visitors' expressions, revealing unexpected connections between individual griefs. Your loss finds company in strangers' words. Patterns emerge that honor both the specificity of each mourning and the ways grief connects us.

The space is intentionally versatile. Friday evening offers an opening reception with music by Kawaji—contemplative electronic sounds that extend the installation's inquiry. Saturday, the exhibition continues through the afternoon before transforming into an intimate performance venue. Poets, musicians, and sound artists bring voice and embodied presence. Spoken word, experimental music, and sonic landscapes shift the space from static memorial into living ritual.

Plan for 20-40 minutes with the installation itself, longer if you attend Saturday evening's performances. Move at your own pace. Read what calls to you. Contribute if it feels right. Silence is welcomed here.

The Artists and the Approach

The House of Mourning is produced by Two Flaneurs—Lee Knight and VI Gorish (vigorish)—artists working at the intersections of music, audio, and visual media to explore transcendental experience in contemporary, secular contexts.

Two Flaneurs is an art collective founded by Lee Knight and VI Gorish, working at the intersections of music, audio, and visual media to explore transcendental experience in contemporary, secular contexts. Drawing on traditions of sacred aesthetics while filtering them through queer and neurodivergent perspectives, Two Flaneurs creates immersive installations and performance events that honor grief, ritual, and collective witness. Their practice asks what sacred space looks like when divorced from inherited belief systems—how technology and art can become transparent enough that viewers encounter previously unaware aspects of their own interiority. Previous collaborative work includes Their Haus (2019), a multidisciplinary performance event that transformed raw space into sanctuary for queer creative expression.

The visual artists contributing to the exhibition bring diverse approaches to exploring grief and loss. Saturday evening performers include poets and musicians working in experimental and contemplative modes, transforming the exhibition space into a venue for collective witness and ritual.

The aesthetic decisions throughout—the darkness, the verticality, the layered sound, the particle-based visualization—all serve the same purpose: creating contemporary sacred space that honors grief without prescribing how to experience it. This isn't art therapy. It's not a grief support group. It's an exhibition that takes mourning seriously as subject matter and creates room for visitors to be present with loss—theirs and others'.

Why Here, Why Now

This project is supported in part by a grant from RiNo Arts District, positioning it within Denver's experimental arts community. Truss House at RiNo Art Park provides the physical container this work requires—a flexible contemporary space that can be transformed into sanctuary.

The two-day format is intentional. Sacred spaces don't need to be permanent to be meaningful. Friday offers opening and contemplative viewing. Saturday extends the experience with performances. The compression creates intensity, a threshold experience that honors the weight of what we're addressing.

December places us at the year's threshold, a liminal time when many reckon with loss. The timing isn't prescriptive—grief doesn't follow calendars—but the season's contemplative quality creates appropriate context.

The project is designed with inclusivity at its core, centering queer, neurodivergent, and marginalized communities through a shared experience of art as healing. Free admission and a secular framework welcome people from all backgrounds and belief systems. This is about creating access to emotional and aesthetic experience, not gatekeeping based on subcultural knowledge or financial resources.

Beyond December

While the physical installation exists for two days, the project extends further. An interactive element allows remote participation—contribute your expression of loss even if you can't attend in person. The website serves as an ongoing documentation and archive.

Future possibilities include remounting in other cities, developing the interactive element into a permanent online memorial space, creating an exhibition catalog that documents this iteration. This project asks questions about collective mourning and secular ritual that deserve continued inquiry.

But first: December 19-20 at Truss House. We invite you to witness, to participate, to sit with grief—yours and others'—in a space designed to honor its necessity.