In the wake
2019
Artist Statement
This project was not created for catharsis.
The original intent was to be an exploration into the repercussions of trauma, the spaces it consumes internally and externally.
It was not meant to have a focus on a single form of trauma.
It was not meant to be autobiographical.
It was not meant to be about my assault.
However sometimes - often times - we are blind to our own motivations.
Sometimes, we create what we need, rather than what we intend.
As such, over the course of shooting I found myself creating images that centered on the body.
Focused on that which I felt I had lost. What I felt no longer belonged to me.
Upon sitting down and studying the volume of my work it dawned on me that the project had transformed into the reclamation of what had felt foreign for so long.
The meaning of this project is thus two-fold. In content and presentation, “In The Wake” displays its initial goal of articulating the forms that trauma takes within us. But with an understanding of the process, it is also about the reconciliation and depuration of the self from our past.
ADDENDUM: 5 years on
Returning to this project, I’ve taken notice to a centering around not just the body at large, but specifically hands: a piece of the body that I view as sacred and deeply intimate.
I’m unsure if I was cognizant of my penchant towards the subject matter during shooting, but in recent years I’ve realized they are a consistent motif across my work. Symbolic of both love and harm, innate dichotomy - giving a hand is an act of trust; being forced a hand trust there broken. Bearers of creation and destruction, equal. Holding a hand is more intimate than sex and an all together openly innocent act.
I think our hands hold more of our soul than we realize, and grief lives in our fingers.
My younger self may not have had the consciousness or words, but she knew her hands were vehicles, and as I clasp my fingers together now I think of her, giving her the hand she needed to hold at a time she needed it most.