Artist Statement

This work investigates loss and mourning through exploring the temporality and fragility of memories and relationships with people no longer on earth. I am discussing the impossibility and the pressure to move on. Through the creation of object, ritual, and documentation, I explore my fear of forgetting my mom. My experience is used as a framework for my audience to reflect on their personal encounters with loss. By bringing my work into a gallery, I create a space of contemplation and mourning for what we lose everyday as time continues without our loved ones. While this serves as a safe space where the audience is invited to consider and talk about their experiences of death and how time changes them, this space also inherently challenges the social norm of avoiding such subjects.

The cloak is a visual representation of the relationship I have with my mother currently. As the memory of her fades, what was protective has become as delicate as the tulle I have used for the cloak. In Victorian society flowers and herbs were used symbolically to convey things society deemed controversial to express. Rosemary in particular has a symbolic and historical meaning of remembrance. By hand cutting and knotting sprigs of rosemary to the cloak, I am reflecting on the memories I still have of my mother. The labor and constant maintenance required to repair the cloak as it is worn, is symbolic of the effort in holding on. This cyclical ritual of wearing and mending is futile, but I continue.

The video is used to share this personal ritual and is shown on a small scale to display intimacy and the difficulty of the act. I then recreate the space of my personal contemplation and mending in the gallery, but do not recreate these acts in this space. This creates an absence, allowing the viewer to put themselves into the space and reflect on their own experience.