Three Tries: The Beginning
Exhibition / Performance
Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Three Tries: The Beginning is an exhibition and performance by Getsay that examines the formation of the psyche through memory, religion, and lived experience. Drawing on SigmundFreud’s structural model of the id, ego, and superego, in parallel with the Southern Baptist Holy Trinity, the work unfolds as an autoethnographic investigation of psychosexual development, queer subjectivity, and the effects of imposed identity. Consciousness is positioned as spatial and navigable, where memory operates as cyclical and fragmentary.

At its center is Dawn Of… (genesis), a sculptural installation constructed from the artist’s childhood bed and other materials. Functioning as both environment and archive, the work aligns with the id, foregrounding instinct, desire, and primary need prior to regulation.From this starting point, the exhibition unfolds through a series of works tied to Freud’s psychosexual stages, each tracing a moment where identity begins to take shape, shift, or come undone.

My Blue Bunny reflects the oral stage, grounding the psyche in early attachment and dependency through a glass reconstruction of a childhood comfort object. The Body is an Object Caught in Between represents the anal stage, focusing on control and the struggle for autonomy within imposed structures. A Monument for the Boy I Lost My Virginity To aligns with the latency stage, revisiting a formative experience shaped by coercion and shame. Ode to Sky and Split to the Bone materializes the genital stage, addressing intimacy and the emergence of identity.

At the center of this framework is Altar for My Ego, drawing on Freud’s idea of the ego as the part of the psyche that moves between inner desire and the outside world. The altar becomes a place where past and present selves meet, holding grief and recognition while grounding the work in both psychological and spiritual experience.

The exhibition is activated through the Three Tries: The Beginning performance, unfolding across the works as a sequence of stations structured in direct relation to the Stations of the Cross. The artist enters without announcement. They are first positioned behind a glass barrier that establishes distance. Moving through the space they stop at each work in turn. Each is engaged through repetition, contact and ritual. This progression carries a sense of inevitability shaped by prior experience, as the artist moves toward a known point of trauma while choosing to confront it.

At the altar clothing is removed and presented as an offering marking a shift from protection to exposure. The gesture holds vulnerability and transformation while addressing a younger self. Institutional garments are introduced and the body is bound, emphasizing systems of control. A bed frame understood as a cross is secured to the artist and carried through the space, marking a moment of punishment and recognition that leads toward collapse.

As the performance continues the distance between artist and audience dissolves. The artist exits the viewing area and enters into direct relation with those present, shifting the encounter toward confrontation and becoming. This movement does not resolve the action but intensifies it, extending the work forward into Three Tries: The End.

Three Tries: The Beginning places the self at the center of the work. Systems of control are remembered and experienced, then reshaped. The exhibition becomes a way of placing the self back into its own history. Memory, desire and belief begin to overlap, and trauma is faced rather than avoided.This return is both chosen and necessary to move the artist forward..

The exhibition Three Tries: The Beginning includes the following works:

• Dawn Of… (genesis)

• Altar for My Ego

• Split to the Bone

• A Monument for the Boy I Lost My Virginity To

• My Blue Bunny

• Three Tries: The Beginning Performance

Photography by Rachel Warren and Savannah O’Leary.