The Last Lifting of the Spoon
- C-print
- Jul 30
- 10 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Preface
An exhibition review is written either as a description, what was included and how it was shown, or in critical terms, an objective analysis of the main themes. My review of ‘Where Spirit Meets the Bone’, curated by Kehkasha Sabah, utilizes an approach associated with creative writing as I weave together three strands. Firstly, there is a personal narrative, my own profound sense of loss at the death of my parents. Secondly, my story is viewed through the lens of the seminal play ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett. Lastly, my essay tries to demonstrate how the viewer can construct a subjective interpretation when engaging with art and attach relevance to specific artworks.
A Prologue
‘A country road. A tree. Evening.’ This is the stage direction for the opening of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. These words could set the scene for a story from my own past. After a long day of walking, my friend and I strolled into town. It was late in the day and we were heading to the pier to catch the ferry home. At this final leg of our journey we decided we needed a meal before embarkation. The café we alighted upon was dismal and the food was poor but this was the only place open to us. At a table in the front window sat two inebriated men engaged in a rambling conversation. One was saying to the other, ‘As soon as you are born you start to die’, and his companion would repeat the phrase. The two figures were reminiscent of Beckett’s characters Vladimir and Estragon seemingly uttering oblique profundities. The situation was tragicomic and, as we headed home on the ferry, we grimaced at this encounter.
Act I
At the beginning of Beckett’s play the audience is presented with Estragon who is attempting to take off his boot. He utters ‘Nothing to be done’, and his companion Vladimir replies, ‘I’m beginning to come round to that opinion’. This brief exchange sets the tone for the play, which follows the two protagonists struggling to resolve their situation without gaining any ground. This mirrors my own experience as I tried to prevent the passing of my parents. My parents died within a period of months: first my father and then my mother. Even though we know that the death of our parents is inevitable, we are never prepared. As a paternal act of kindness my father always tried to spare me from the trauma of the final days of our relatives. I did not go to the hospital when a grandparent was on their deathbed or see their corpse. In hindsight this might have left me ill-prepared for dealing with my own father’s death. I am assuming that continued exposure to the processes of dying would have helped to prepare me for the rites of passing. The film ‘Grace’ (2023), by Naeem Mohaiemen, addresses this situation directly. His project was a collaboration with Karen Wentworth (1956-2023) who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Over a period of time the two collaborators reflect on Wentworth’s life and its ending; they accept that there is nothing to be done other than to try to make sense of this event.
In Beckett’s play the amount of time that Vladimir and Estragon have been waiting at the tree is indeterminate. They were there before the start of the play and they remain there after the end of the play. The ending of life is equally unclear: it can seem to have a start and an end but that is not the case. As the two strangers that I encountered stated: ‘As soon as you are born you start to die’. When did my parents start to die and is their demise the conclusion? My father and I were on this long road. It started when he seemed to have a minor health problem, something that could be solved or, at least, monitored. Patience was required as we spent time in the hospital waiting for the doctor, and then later as we were trying to establish a regime for taking medicines on a daily basis. Ceal Foyer’s video piece, ‘Unfinished’ (1995), of two hands twiddling their thumbs captures this ongoing passage of time and the mundane repetitious acts that provide no resolution just the maintenance of a status quo. Waiting and repetition became the scheme for: appointments, doctors, nurses, ambulances, and telephone calls. I became accustomed to waiting in line on the telephone listening to repeated messages and piped music, and having to be persistent to get my message across.
At this point there seemed to be hope. It was just a matter of monitoring my father’s diet. The doctors told me that my father would be ready for an operation once he regained strength and then, perhaps, the problem would be solved. We were in the hands of others – those that profess to know, and either can do or fail to do. Although concerned with environmental issues, Sharad Das’ sculptural series ‘The Hand That Kills, The Hand That Mourns’ (2025), draws attention to this dichotomy of action and non-action: the helpless frustration of observing what is happening and what should happen, and a foreseeable outcome. The cupped hands of Sharad Das’ work make offerings but these offerings come too late – and this became the story of my father’s decline.
As my father’s condition worsened it became glaringly evident that my mother was also deteriorating. For a few years my mother had become more withdrawn. She did not want to go out; she did not want to see people; she did not want to do anything. She was fixed on one side of the settee showing little interest in what was going on around her. Either she did not recognize my father’s condition or she did not care. Years ago, when reflecting on their future deaths, my mother said: ‘We won’t go hand in hand like in a romance’. Now she was resigned to their passing, registering this by declaring: ‘We are dying’.
My mother and father had been together for over 60 years: they were bound together. In Act I of Beckett’s play the audience is introduced to two additional characters – Pozzo and Lucky. Joined together by a rope, Lucky seems to be Pozzo’s servant; but their relationship is complicated. Pozzo pulls the rope but Lucky leads the way. Likewise, my parents were now pulling each other along. Their voices jarred against each other, one wanting to live and the other resigned to die. And I was panicking, trying to bring this all together. Reetu Sattar’s video piece ‘Je Dak Kothao Pouche Na (Calls that Reach Nowhere)’ (2024), enacts this relationship between voices, noise and actions as the ‘unheard’ attempt to make their needs clear. The turmoil in our family home would reach its crescendo.
The relationship between a married couple is not always harmonious: it is frequently tumultuous. Hetain Patel’s video ‘Don’t Look at the Finger’ (2017), playfully points to the conflicts in marriages, combining ritual and stylized combat in the context of a choreographed wedding ceremony. Humour belies the seriousness of the dynamics of a long marriage. My mother said of my father: ‘Everyone thinks he’s wonderful but I have had to put a lot of hard work into him’. They had always looked after each other but that was now coming to an end as neither could help the other. It was a hot summer night when my father went into hospital one last time. At the time I thought he would be discharged after a week or so. A few days later I was told that he was dying and that I should get to the hospital. During the last moments with my father I was helping him to eat, bringing the spoon to his mouth. The next day he passed away. When I was told that he had died I dropped to my knees and cried.
Act I of Beckett’s play ends with nightfall. Vladimir and Estragon have not met with Godot.
Act II
My father’s funeral was on a bright sunny day. After the ceremony at the church, the congregation walked through the village behind the hearse to the graveyard. Many of our friends were there to offer their support. As my mother looked into the open grave the priest turned to her and said, ‘You will join your husband soon’. This was meant to be consoling, giving hope of reunion, but it was also a dark statement of truth. When she was told that my father had died my mother’s reaction was ‘Oh ‘eck!’ – northern English slang that mildly states: ‘Oh no!’. My mother’s weak lament is in stark contrast to the old Scottish ballad that Susan Philipsz sings in her audio piece, ‘Lowlands’ (2010). In Philipsz’s songs it is the woman that is deceased and she mourns that she will not be with her lover again. For my mother, her own song had already been sung and was fading away.
In Act II, Vladimir and Estragon return to the tree to wait for Godot. Likewise, I realised that my mother and I had started to travel along the same road that I had trodden with my father. She did not seem to register the death of her husband – he was just not there – and at the same time I was traumatised by my loss. We could not grieve together. We were at a distinct juncture between the past and the future. This severance from a previous state of existence is the subject of Hong-Kai Wang’s audio piece, ‘Hazzeh’ (2019), that focuses attention on the lost histories of a people and their relationship to the land. With the death of my father, I felt that I had been expelled from a land I once knew. My mother would sigh, ‘I wish it could be like it was’, but my response was that we have to move on. I had a new life to lead without my father but with her.
Vladimir and Estragon do encounter Pozzo and Lucky once more when the latter are in much poorer condition – Pozzo is blind and Lucky is mute. Their progress is hampered. In regards to my mother, I was trying to lead us forward. I had set up a weekly schedule that included me staying with her, and care workers visiting the house. Eventually, there was the inevitable incident when she fell. Very soon after this event she went into hospital. There was a plan to get her home and set up more support but slowly her will to carry on faded. In her last days I was feeding her from a spoon just as I had done with my father. And then she just went to sleep.
Death did not end with the passing of my mother. What was left was their house, our family home, and their belongings. It is the strangest feeling when a home dies. Sounak Das emphasizes an awareness of the overlooked background noises of the domestic space in the interactive sound installation, ‘Entropic Conversations’ (2025). These murmurs have a ghostly presence, so much so that I could not stay in my parents’ house at night. Subsequent visits took place during daylight hours so that my wife, my daughter and I could sort through the contents; emptying the house took a number of years. Similar to ‘The Last Breath Spoken’ (2025), by Yasmin Jahan Nupur, this process took on a performative act of grief as we examined every item noting their feel, smell and, even, sound of these familial belongings. My wife’s role in this ritual was on different levels. She mourned the loss of her parents-in-law but the cut was not felt as deeply as that which I felt. She was compelled to weep in the same manner, but she also had to take on the role of the officiator who has the duties of settling the affairs – literally the business of death. Suppressing emotion and the role-playing duties of a woman in our society has been reflected in the female character in Afrah Shafiq's interactive story-game ‘The Bride Who Could Not Stop Crying’ (2023). This game compels us to think about the constant negotiation and social conditioning of loss and grief.
The Epilogue
Waiting for Godot reaches no resolution: Godot fails to arrive; Vladimir and Estragon remain on the stage. My friend and I had encountered the pair in the café and overheard them reiterate a line uttered by Pozzo: ‘They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more’.
For this essay I have given an account of my own experience of losing my parents. I have also attempted to make connections between my narrative and the works of the artists in the exhibition ‘Where Spirit Meets the Bone’; admittedly, these links might seem tentative to the artists’ original intentions. The curator, Kehkasha Sabah, has suffered a similar familial loss, which became a motivation for this project. Conscious of the trauma of loss, both personal and shared, and the impact this has on mental and physical health (spirit and bone), the exhibition provides a contemplative space that promotes listening and healing. As part of Sabah’s long-term research into care as a curatorial methodology, she proposes the question: ‘How might art restore what has been severed or, at the very least, honor what remains?’ This essay is my individual response to this question; its purpose is as an act of acceptance of what remains.
Stephen Clarke
Senior Lecturer in Art and Design: Critical and Contextual Studies
University of Chester, UK
This essay is dedicated to my father Thomas Peter Clarke (23 June 1935 to 21 July 2021) and my mother Agnes Clarke (9 July 1936 to 14 February 2022).
The exhibition 'Where Spirit Meets the Bone' curated by Kehkasha Sabah made part of the ArtExchange Moving Image Curatorial Fellowship, by British Council, LUX, and Art South Asia Project.
Kehkasha Sabah is an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Kehkasha has served in various notable roles, including as an Editorial Assistant at MoMA (NYC) and as a Research Fellow contributing to the Translocal Solidarity Network. Also as Assistant Curator at Dhaka Art Summit 2020 and as Curator of the 3rd Majhi International Art Residency 2021. She was the former Curator of Kalakendra (BD). She has curated over twenty exhibitions and her most significant contributions include - Land Water and Border (2021) Netherlands, De|Real (2020), Collective Body : Dhaka Art Summit (2020), Mercury Falling (2017) Kalakendra, Alchemy of Losses (2017), Self/Identity (2016) Bangladesh National Museum, and Celebrated Violence Series 1-5 (2016-2014). Kehkasha’s work has been recognized with numerous accolades, including the CIMAM travel grant ‘Museum in Transition’ 2018 in Sweden, and was also featured in the 2021 Swedish contemporary art journal C-Print.