past futures

charcoal on wood panel 2019

In my work, the protective and fearful tiger is the antithesis to the ghost, a familiar specter of a long-black-haired woman that exists as a reverse, alternate version of myself.

The “ghost” culminated from my realm of study into transgenerational haunting, a phenomena that ties survivors of physical/emotional violence to their subsequent generations in a cycle of stress and healing. Secrets of unresolved grief that are built upon omission or revision of truth lie deep in layers of subtle but complex unconscious states. Though, even if they are never brought to light, they still function by subliminal messaging and upbringing; as a child is raised to navigate through states of grief by following by example of its parents. Instead, what is left is a clear-cut division between generations, an unfamiliar gap built upon historical amnesia that grows less defined with each successor in the family. In other words, the emotions of repressed trauma are inherited to fill the silence left between parents and their children, but that same silence prevents the re:memory of the experience from being inherited as well, in the household and in collective cultural identity.