Enchanted Children
2024-
How much of becoming yourself is the result of belonging to a community that recognizes you?
My art making comes from teaching folklore and fairytales. From stories I know that “In everything there is everything.” Meaning that even in the worst of times there are directions leading us toward where we belong. Both exist albeit in different proportions. Our bodies keep going despite immeasurable suffering. We are capable of transformation and being many things at once. My work rests on a continuum from trauma to transformation, addressing inter-generational, cultural, and political wounds.
Making visible what happens on that continuum is an act of holding – “Holding is an act that implies weight and assistance, an act of touching and proximity, a gesture of binding rather than division.[1] Holding is especially important for children who are often trivialized and frequently represented as occupants of an “eternal liminality.”
(1) Helen Molesworth, Art is Medicine: on the work of Simone Leigh, Art Forum 2018
“We Can Only Be Human Together” is about injustices done to children when adults wage wars of greed and power. It is inspired by the story The Six Swans. I show the moment of transformation from swan to human as each child helps another.
