Unknown archive, 13.5 x 8.5, 2021, Pen on found photography
Un-mothering
What happens when our first relationship is formed within and around a person who is not able to love? Too fragile, too scared, too broken to be present?
What possibilities does this relationship hold when regarded as instinctive and innate, never to be questioned or attended to?
In this project, the artist re-examines the maternal bond, separation, and loss. Using found family archives as a vessel to reflect their deepest vulnerabilities around bonding, belonging, and rupture, they formulate their sentiments in a correspondence aimed for awareness and healing.
Through the process of reimagining the initial alliance to create a dialogue that otherwise would be impossible, the artist employs daily objects to reflect on their own displacement and uprooting. Objects coated with paper mâché denote the erasure of memory, and time as well as the narrative of the past that they embody.