About my work

'It was quite a noisy night'   2020

Ink and milk on paper

Traumatic experiences impact the human brain in complex ways and psychology informs us that these memories are stored as smaller chunks rather than entire events. This may be nature’s way of protecting us against reliving a disturbing past but does it also introduce the potential of adding fiction to the retelling of these faceted stories?

In this piece, I have investigated a traumatic wartime story from my own family that has passed down several generations and transformed along its journey to gain an almost mythical status. The fascination is in how a child and adult deal with a traumatic event differently by interjecting their own imagery and symbolic connections to lay down memories in a way that gives them closure.

The shrine-like installations of Christian Boltanski and Ilya Kabakov provided inspiration, particularly in how they skilfully blur truth and fiction and give the viewer a quiet space to recount and insert their own ancestral past.

The work itself disrupts the sacred family history and we are asked to consider how shattered memories and contemporary influences can morph how we perceive the past.