The Way Inn
Rose Lynch
Grief is love with nowhere to go. When stuck in loss, we grasp for what we can no longer hold. The Way Inn is a project that examines how grief is embedded in abandoned ephemera and material culture. It explores how our built environments are a reflection of the self; how an archive functions as a repository of memory and grief; and how the physical artifacts of a place form an archive.
The project consists of three installments: the personal, the public, and the poetic. Focusing on the intimate, the first installment is Take Me to the River, a book in which I piece together the identity of my uncle that I never knew, through his found objects and the testimonies of his siblings.
The second installment—In the House that is Lost and Gone—focuses on the public and looks at our built environment as an archive and a reflection of its inhabitants. It examines our phenomenological relationship with our homes, and how, even when no longer inhabited, these places still hold significance.
The third installment is the poetic—a 16mm film examining the ephemeral nature of a home; the building and curating of a home; and the experience of losing a home. The project showcases items I have kept from my grandparents’ house. These items, though out-of-date, are kept because they are artifacts of the home, the last vestige, the final frontier.
If grief is love with nowhere to go, then this is how I will build a room for it.