ARTIST STATEMENT
How can we reconcile the terrible and the beautiful things given to us by our family? To construct a hybridized identity is to challenge the notion that these two facets of our inheritance cannot coexist. In my self-portrait, I explore the conjunction between the intergenerational trauma of military service and the storytelling tradition of fairy and folktales which so equally defined my early childhood. The gun exemplifies this dichotomy: the barrel rests under the chin in a confronting reference to self-harm, while the embellishment references Shakespeare’s fairy queen Mab, riding in a hollow pearl to gift dreams to troubled artists.
ARTWORK PROCESS
The sculptural component of this artwork – a pearl encrusted replica of a WWII-era submachine gun – was visually reconstructed from archive photography, initially as a 2D paper mock-up, then as a rough form constructed from corrugated cardboard blocks. The embellishment was applied in layers: first, flat-backed plastic beads were adhered onto the raw object, followed by an off-white primer and finished with a plethora of synthetic and freshwater pearls in a range of descending sizes. In photography, the hazy chiaroscuro lighting and a nightgown passed down from my grandmother complete the visage, mimicking a surreal fragment of ill-remembered dream
