“The spaces you’ve left are heavy with your memories.
I lie here bereft, sutured with longings of you.
I miss you”Poem accompaniment of “Grief I: Sutured With Longings Of You”, mixed media printmaking
-Nusye McComish
Grief, as I am learning to live through, is not merely an emotional state – it is akin to a wound that has no visible bleeding, a breaking that leaves no bone to set. The body knows this. It curls inward, foetal, attempting to hold together what has been torn apart by loss. And this is what the loss actually is: a permanent state or wound that does not heal; a severing that leaves you living in a different reality, a long, dim, dark tunnel where he was the light and joy and play and warmth and love.
This work renders visible the invisible violence of bereavement. Through layers of sheer organza –blue, red, blue, – the same figure repeats, trapped in the loop of a grief that does not progress or resolve. The hand-stitching that binds these translucent layers to the crumpled, violent backing mimics the desperate suturing the widow must perform upon herself: piecing together a self, a life, a world that has been fundamentally ruptured. The red threads are both wound and remedy, longing and endurance.
The foetal position is an understood universal language – it is the body’s ancient wisdom when faced with unbearable pain. It is protection. It is the only honest shape grief can take when the world demands we remain upright, composed, productive.
What the world sees on a passport picture: a downturned mouth, a face swollen with unshed tears, black clothing, quietness, slow movements. What the body holds: chaos, disorder, an immensity of breaking that must somehow be contained, lived through – moment by excruciating moment. The unbearable questioning of how to continue to exist with an absence of its centre.
This mixed media piece does not ask for understanding. It does not offer comfort. It asks only for witness.
This piece is my submission to the POSE 2025 SITE 41, at ArtSpace Portsmouth, Brougham Road, Southsea, PO5 4PA. SMMAP ID #105.
I am honoured to present this work alongside the remarkable artists of ArtSpace Portsmouth in City Arts’ POSE 2025 exhibition. To create in community, to place our most vulnerable truths beside one another’s – this is how we bear what we cannot bear alone. Thank you for every artist here for holding space, for your courage, and for the dialogue our collective work creates.
POSE 2025 ArtSpace Exhibition takes place on Friday 24th, Saturday 25th, Sunday 26th October, 10:30am – 5:00pm.
Nusye McComish, SouthSeaEyes Printmaker
Eleven Months In: A Widow’s Poem and Autoethnographic Note – Writing Grief From Inside The Data
Grief on the Body: Embodied Loss and Creative Practice as Record
