In Between the Lines (erasure) (2023-2024)
- Christina Foisy
- Apr 7
- 3 min read
In-Between the Lines: Part of the Constellation Series
In-Between the Lines is a piece from my Constellation series, a body of work in which I explore constellations as symbols of navigation during the grieving process. I use these celestial patterns as metaphors to guide me through the fragmented traces of my family’s past, seeking meaning in the pieces of history that remain hidden. In this series, I create lightbox collages from archival remnants of my mother’s artwork and my father’s love poems, which I found on scrap paper and various ephemera during the dehoarding process. Each fragment, whether it’s a line of poetry or an image, is a star in its own right—each one a point of reference, helping me piece together a story about my familial roots and the mother I never had the chance to know.
Much like the constellations we see in the night sky, these fragments form a constellation of my own, one that maps out the layers of memory, loss, and absence. Through the process of reassembly, I navigate the tenuous connections that define my sense of belonging, weaving together the stories that have been left behind. Each collage is an effort to uncover these connections and give them new meaning, creating a tapestry that speaks to both the light and darkness of my family’s history.
In-Between the Lines: A Collage of Memory, Loss, and Transformation
In-Between the Lines captures this exploration in visual form. It speaks to the space between memory and erasure, the lines between life and death, and the things that remain after the larger picture fades. This piece, like the rest of the Constellation series, reflects my ongoing search for understanding and connection, guiding me through the in-between spaces where memory lives.
There’s a space between the lines, an invisible threshold that can only be felt, never fully seen. It’s where memory resides—a place suspended between what has been and what is yet to come. This space became the foundation for my latest collage, In-Between the Lines—a visual meditation on loss, transformation, and the stories we inherit but cannot always fully understand. The title of this piece reflects its central theme: the in-between. It speaks to the moments that exist between death and what comes after, to the silence and shadows that fill the spaces left behind when a person is gone. In my father’s absence, I have found myself in that very space. The before—the years of family and the everyday rhythms of life—feels like a distant memory, a chapter crossed out with thick black marker. It’s as if some things are simply too heavy, too fraught with complexity, to ever fully grasp. And yet, these lines that are left behind tell their own story—one of what remains, what can never be fully erased, and the quiet wisdom found in the things we don’t know.
As I created this collage, I began to think about the space between memory and erasure. My father, in many ways, lived between these lines. The before—the world before death, before illness, before grief—has become a blur. But what comes after is still a mystery, still unfolding. This is the space where my father’s voice echoes, where the lines between life and death blur, and where I, as a daughter, search for understanding in the aftermath of loss.
In-Between the Lines is an offering to the quiet, unseen spaces in life. This collage is a reminder that some stories are written in the spaces between the lines, in the silences that exist in the aftermath of loss.
Constellations is a lightbox installation weaving together poetry and collage, re-membering (reassembling) stigmatized deaths such as postpartum suicide and hoarding.
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