ghost, 2022, 62x 10x11 inches, modified Christmas tree from 2021, balancing bird toy

A discarded Christmas tree from 2021, stripped of its ornaments and lights, stands suspended on a single branch. Perched at the point of contact is a small balancing bird toy — the kind commonly found in airport gift shops — its weighted beak continuously tipping forward and back to stabilize the entire structure. The tree no longer commemorates. It no longer celebrates. Having outlived its seasonal function, it persists only as structure: extended, precarious, and held in place by a mechanism seemingly insufficient for the task. Ghost examines what remains after meaning has receded from the systems that once sustained it. The balancing bird does not symbolize belief so much as enact its condition: a minute but continuous adjustment that prevents collapse precisely by never reaching equilibrium. Remove it, and the structure falls. Leave it, and the tree continues to stand, suspended within a logic no longer fully intact. The work asks how large systems endure through forms of support so fragile and disproportionate they verge on invisibility.