The beginning of a project is marked by the unknown and the first steps are unpredictable, but enticing, like the first mark on a page or the first roll of film. As I begin to venture deeper, I slowly descend into the layers of my consciousness and thought. I see that the body isn’t hollow but there are ecosystems that are flourishing and narratives that have taken years to form. I might see traces of others that have traveled there before. The only way to glimpse what is inside is to illuminate it and then the insight will follow. Upon closer inspection, I see the stories told in the wrinkles of the skin or the cracks in a cave wall; I see how our bodies reflect the healing and regenerative processes of the earth. With every incision and extraction, something new grows in its place, whether it is in the cells of the body or the limbs of a tree. As you return to it, things start to change and grow in strange new ways.
This work is about examining how a body holds experience and the sites and methods of transformation in regards to painful and traumatic experiences. I want to explore how one can reconstruct emotional pain into nuanced expression, to recognize it as a unifying experience that closes the distance made by our geographical, generational and historical placements. It is conceived from periods of psychological pain and stagnation and a desire to move through its origins. Art making is how I materialize and disentangle this pain.