Site-specific installation with 13 X 19 inch, pigmented inkjet prints, thread and bed sheets, 2016
Traumatic experiences have a tendency to stay with their victims long after the incident has passed. Survivors of sexual assault often lose their sense of bodily autonomy—the very basis of humanity is stolen. This impacts relationships with their bodies and with intimate spaces. There are days it’s impossible to get into bed and days it’s impossible to leave.
a little while longer is a look into the small, often quiet battles that take place after trauma. It’s an attempt to decipher, on a personal level, what parts of our trauma still cling to us. These fragments of our assault can be a smell, a position, an object. The work has us find which aspects of ourselves and our sexuality we have left to reclaim. It’s also a defiant statement of how far we’ve come, both individually and collectively. a little while a longer is a lingering moment of solidarity and, if possible, growth. In discovering how our assault haunts us, we take one more step towards recovery.
These images serve as vignettes of trauma; the objects therein serve as formidable odes to what each participant has or will eventually overcome. The subject’s identities are as diverse and interconnected as their stories, each frozen moment a nod to the next. Those who participate—both subjects and viewers—are asked to come to terms with the physicality of the space they consume. In this way, a little while longer is as much a performance as it is an installation.
Postcards: To
Unfinished Work in Progress
Found objects collaged on 4 x 6 inch vintage postcards, 2017
Postcards: To is a means of examining how one moves forward from trauma. It aims to define movement and progress by coopting the written stories of travel and obscuring them to varying degrees. The process of unpacking previously repressed memories is not straightforward; survivors often learn about their own trauma through seemingly disjointed flashbacks and unexpected moments of clarity.
The previous owners of the postcards, both writers and recipients, had no means of knowing where these cards might end up. In using objects that have been discarded and donated to entities other than the artist, Postcards: To aims to create a universal story of growing up and beyond the past. Discovering and confronting the unsavory moments of our histories is a process that is at some moments sweet, often upsetting, and desperately triumphant.
Viewers are encouraged to go through the suitcase and handle the cards, rearranging them in any way they see fit. In letting strangers touch and possibly harm the art, the work aims to mimic the way in which growth is both a communal and vulnerable process.
At BOOM Concepts for Yes, and- The Conversation Continues
Inkjet prints of collaged bodily fluids and found objects, 2016
Save up what makes you uncomfortable.
Let it get stuck under your nails, then wash your hands well. Rummage through drawers and boxes and let the dust make you sneeze. Let it leak, then bottle it up.
Stop hiring rapists and predators.
Vintage Advertisements, NASA Images, 2016
Space Anxiety thumbs its nose at aggressive heterosexuality and patriarchal attachment to gender norms. We laugh at the rigidity of these systems that have historically relied on false information and fear mongering, yet still hold ourselves accountable to their standards. The text within the images are made from major and minor changes to the original ads—surprisingly wordy essays imploring your pathos to buy that soup lest your husband fall out of love—to create a new, queer realm of anxiety.
What affect does the threat of losing one’s husband have on the closeted lesbian? Can we really pretend pinkwashing the army is the answer to US Imperialism? How long can the housewife convince herself that her husband’s apathy isn’t actually soup-related? What are the soapy implications of a non-binary person who desires both the pink shampoo and the woman who uses it? Can you really please your partner if you don’t disinfect your vagina?
Voyer is a reclamation of public space. I followed, I watched, I regained power over the space that never should have been unsafe
