“Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty”is a project that tells stories about prisoners and people who were committed in mental asylums, in a beautifully simple, yet powerful way. These works consider spaces, lives and environments that are off limits to most of society. The artworks also reflect on the notion of what performance in the everyday means for those who live in a space where private and public co-exist, sometimes simultaneously.
The first workof this projectcalled, “Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty”,is a mesmerising film of a man Schwenk invited to perform in a maximum-security prison. The man dances with a lawnmower to the music of a harrowingly beautiful waltz, as he mows the lawn in an area surrounded by alarmed perimeter fencing and razor wire.
The lawn is surrounded by 20 magnificent towering palm trees. It is an oasis in the maximum-security area of the prison, that offers a respite from the confinement of the prison cells and the cold metal surfaces and concrete of the prison. It almost seems surreal. The air seems sweeter and fresher here. The waltz is filled with hope but is underwritten with a score of despair.