Work from your current project "Domestic Excavation Series" is currently up at Amigos through January. Can you talk a little about the installation?
The installation is a point of departure that stems from the discovery of found photographs that were taken of my family while we were living in Jamaica. These images were destroyed due to a flood. After inspecting the stack, each photo was bound to the next. Pulling apart each photograph carefully, trying to salvage what I could as I lifted each image, a colorful film residue stained each side of the paper. Left behind was a fantastical syrupy formation that destroyed the image yet had profound resonance in my current immigrant situation. The mixture of colors that bled onto the photographic surface took on a mystical dispersion across the physical photograph that seemed to reconstitute my past space by creating an expanse caught in the midst of transformation. It is from this foundation that I began to examine land and its connection to the Caribbean household. The installation serves as a venue that house these multimedia photographic objects and the varying states of entropy - decay/metamorphosis they embody. The collection of relic- like images present a framework that investigates the history of family and cultural identity.
Part of the installation includes the book "Afro-Creole" by Richard D. E. Burton. What significance does this book have to the rest of the pieces?
Well Richard Burton’s book, Afro Creole serves as the basis for the “Domestic Excavation Series”. As I was flipping through its pages, learning more about the Jamaican culture than I ever understood while living there, I read a small section that spoke about the ideas of “family land”. The author describes “the yard (land) space as an “institution capable of binding together nuclear family units and an extended family network in a single social space and physical space…The yard is an extension of the house, just as the house is the living core of the yard; the outer limits of the yard came to represent the outer walls of the house itself”…land is to be handed down to children and children’s children, till every generation “dead out” …family land is the spatial dimension of the family line, reflecting its continuity and identity”. This excerpt became a transformative piece of textual information that allowed me to grasp ideas of identity that dwelled outside of my own individuality. My lineage was apparent and where that lineage was born became blaring. This experience coupled with the happenstance destruction of my family photographs began the formulation of the project.
This work is far removed from traditional photographic techniques - is this a departure from your earlier photo work or has your work always been more rooted in abstraction?
Hmmm that’s interesting to think about, well the work can maybe function in both ways I feel. Though the modes of display that I am experimenting with throughout the installation may seem divorced from traditional photography it really is rooted in nostalgic darkroom executions. Some prints are made in the color darkroom, while others are digital replications of family photographs made in a color lab. The resulting collages begin to layer these archaic techniques, one onto the other in the hopes of creating create a binding photographic space based on the Caribbean family institution.
On the note of abstraction, I have never fully immersed myself in the process until this project. My previous work was purely about representation, and my attempts to subvert the realities I depicted. In my previous project, I was really interested in showcasing Jamaican folk tales that I grew up listening to. I would go out into my neighborhood setting off smoke bombs in an attempt to capture the unseen; I would photograph at night in the hopes of gathering the essence of another dimension. It was fun. I never felt fully confident to create a project that was just about line or forms until I was presented with the opportunity to make this project.
Now that you are finished with school, do you have any plans for the future?
Other than the occasional panic attack, starting immediately I will be applying to a bunch of residency programs geared towards emerging artists. I think I still yearn for discourse around my work that I may no longer have now. Maybe get a job but that is plan z.
What are some artists or things that have inspired you lately?
Kate Steciw. School Girl Crushes. Yamini Nayar. Sister.
