“Taking a Break” (video still), by Krystal Brown, in her show “15,000 Days’,’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through March 28.
The gallery says Ms. Brown “contemplates climate change through the context of suspended time and death as a question rather than a finality. In this three-channel video installation, filmed November 2020 at Peaks Island, Maine, Brown utilizes conceptual motifs such as grave digging and specific costuming to speak to working-class labor, mostly the unseen work. Sound is an equally important component to the visuals of shoveled earth and a churning sea. The original poem, written by Brown, also titled “15,000 Days,’’ is performed by local Boston artist Kimberly Barnes. Experimental sound artist Adam Giangregorio provides minimalist drone music, recorded on-site at Battery Steele at Peaks Island. Through the lens of hauntology, Brown both pushes back against and concedes to an undetermined future.’’
Postcard from around 1900 showing the long-gone Gem Theater and the Peaks Island House hotel. Peaks Island is part of Portland. Its population rises from around 900 in the winter to several thousand in the summer because of people “from away” with summer houses there.
