To Mend Self

MAT Alumni

Major: Painting

Graduation Year: 2017

Artist Statement:

I am interested in making work that allows the viewer into intimate moments between the self as a mind and the self as a body. These intimate moments depict, both figuratively and abstractly, the mind grappling with the body and all that has been projected onto it.

I want to understand what it is we thought we could be, and what it is we think we can be now. My work deals with the memory of what we wished for as a child and the memory of trauma that has inhibited the belief that these things are possible.

I am interested in labor and the process of repetition as a form of healing of mending. Repetition serves, not only as a mirror of the rumination that comes with trauma, but also as an attempt to reconcile with it, through needle and thread, stitch by stitch, yarn and hand, under and over.

I see the fabric, the yarn, and the thread as an extension of the body, surgery on the body, and the mending of the body. This is my attempt to redefine my body with my hand, rather than that of others, and claim back the agency I let escape me along the way.