i wore orthopedic boots as a child. they were ugly, undeserving shoes. and thus, as soon as i judged my grandparents’ plot of land to be sufficiently overgrown, and after some meticulous planning, i shoved the ugly boots’ unworthiness as far in as my five-year-old arms could. all those involved or interested were later informed that i had had the misfortune of having a small mouse steal my useful shoes.
then as now, collaborative storytelling with the human and the more-than-human, the imagining of alternative possibilities, research as making and making as research, resourcefulness, and working patiently and intentionally while allowing for chance and surprise, are fundamental pieces in the ways i work.
in this now, i research and make using images and words. my visual work interweaves documentary with fiction; my writing weaves the discursive into the poetic. images and words inform each other and are tools to think about and comprehend. i use digital and analogue still and moving images, archival and borrowed material, and intervening techniques such as collage and embroidery to probe memory and imagination, identity and belonging, home and/as body. as i am very much accessible to myself, i often depart from my own cognitive and emotional experiences to start thinking about and working on what is situated outside of my own body or experience. this allows me to not only unearth new ideas about what i am but also soften the boundaries between the self and the other, as i aim to make with, not about. collaborative work, work that is able to return to where it was born, and relational making that departs from kin-/friendships are increasingly important aspects in my practice.
of flesh and terra
in of flesh and terra, i narrate a search for psychological belonging motivated by a discovery of genetic belonging. i converse with myself, a great-great-grandmother, and the soil i collected in the places this ancestor inhabited. these imagined dialogues resulted in and are part of two entities—the dead can dance too, a moving-image essay, and anatomy of a memory, a mixed-media installation.