In 2018 my mother died suddenly.  In the aftermath, I began to explore my relationship with her, as well as the past traumas that had reshaped our family. I wanted to better understand where I sat within that story, what my story was, as well as attempting to better comprehend the relationship between my mother and my son, who was born 6 months after her death. They are two people who will never meet yet are linked to me through lineage and memory; two people who are linked to each other through birth, death, and love.

Over the past two years I have developed an interdisciplinary body of work that focuses on the examination of identity, lineage, and temporality in the face of grief, trauma, and control over the loss of my mother. Waves uses audio, video, installation, drawing, and text while also inviting the viewer into the exhibition space as a participant. Viewer interaction is integral to my work, and as such, that interaction becomes an intervention within the gallery space. The viewer is given the ability to activate a conversation between the present and the past, disrupting the room sonically.

This temporal conversation occurring across a variety of mediums, addresses the grief and trauma from the loss of my mother while also re-examining my identity in relation to the birth of my son.  As I navigate this relationship between the creation and destruction of life, I must also contend with the forces of dominant masculinity, which attempt to dictate and control how I emote.  This overarching system creates a personal disconnect through the erasure of emotional language, and only through subversive action, can I expose it and find ways to reduce its impact and control. What emerges is a re-shaping of generational relationships, and hopefully, the masculine identity as well.

Written Thesis