STATEMENT
| ARTIST STATEMENT How do we become who we are? The question of lineage is a tricky one. All my life I’ve hoarded artwork, letters, journals, childhood treasures, photographs, super 8 movies, and family heirlooms. Shaggy n their appearance, I have an emotional attachment to these objects that transcends nostalgia. This collection is an archive of liveslived—talismans of my misfit youth—which form the basis for my current body of work. After a search for an authentic dialogue, I realize that I am my own unreliable narrator, given to straying from a strict historical representation. Being my own ethnographer is a painful proposition, and these documents, all in a jumble, needed to be sorted and categorized. Inspired by 19th century Gothic literature, and the forensic sciences, it was in the sorting and cataloging process that I began to find context for these materials. There is a sublime, disquieting sensation obtainable from the juxtaposition of the photographic images, objects, sound pieces, and videos, which are now part of a large multi-media project. Using one of the voice tracks I recorded for the sound project The Unabridged Journals and Letters, I made the video 80’s Confusion That I Have Felt For Most Of My Life. A journal entry I made during my early twenties is read by a narrator over video shot during a recent trip to the street I grew up on. Digitized 16 mm and Super-8 footage from different locations and periods of my life is intercut with the video. Despite all my efforts to be “unique” and a rebel when I was a young adult, there’s a quotidian quality to the text being read, and a great sense of shame in the unveiling of my humanity. This piece is a brutally honest narrative that describes the doubts that I felt during a period of youthful transition. In the photograph The Unabridged Journals and Letters, I placed my letters and journals into an old toy chest. I revisited key places from my past. Going to my old school, home, and other places of interest, I photographed these significant locations with the carefully investigative approach of an outsider. The sense of the uncanny is evident. This sorting through this material of old artwork, photographs, letters, and other miscellanea that had personal totemic qualities, I recently began a new narrative piece, called Sinners and Saints. In creating this fractured narrative, the story is open to interpretation though the viewers own filter. It is through the juxtaposition of these elements that I am able to construct a narrative, one that illustrates the complexities of our roles and identities that we assume though out our lives. |
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