The Vulnerable Mourner 
Joey Askin & Yuval Krispin

At one point during your life, you will experience the death of a loved one. It is a sad but inevitable fate that touches every life on earth. From the moment the theme was announced of sacred time, I could think of nothing but the period of mourning where one is most vulnerable. During this time, you will never be closer to yourself and are more sunken in your thoughts. This time of reflection is when you need the most from G-d, making it sacred. We are representing this by bolstering the theme of vulnerability and weakness by using the human figures in the box. The human being is created with joints and positioned in a way that demonstrates these themes. The person is on their knees, praying upwards, almost falling forward. The forward fall represents the instability of prayer and the support coming from something intangible like faith. The white path on the board represents the directed connection to the divine and an escape from your own thoughts. The color white precisely separates the harsher black, creating contrast. The path represents the prosses of healing and recovering from this trauma. It is not straight because there is no healing without some struggle. Furthermore white represents purity and salvation. The trees symbolize a gateway into the broken mind where color and blossoms have no place. The trees have burned edges and are barren. Blossoms needing nutrients and light have no place in this mind where it is dark and bare, the broken mind. The mind is broken because it becomes it is hurt. It is unable to perform the way it had before. Altogether the piece is meant to represent what the mind of someone during this sacred time could look like.