Distant Histories

The layering of context and memory through digitally manipulated images within my work is a response to the intricate geometry colonial and pre-colonial world history.

Distant Histories explores the relationships between form, pattern, architecture, line, and sculpture. The patterns and designs in this series are derived from physical material.

This work began during my studies in Florence, Italy, where due to resources, I was forced to think of more creative ways to make my work, and to use materials that were unfamiliar to me. I went materials shopping at the $1 store and created weavings from perforated bath mats, embroidery thread, and other household items, knick knacks, and utilitarian materials. It studied the qualities of these materials and created analog and digital abstractions of their form, which were later manipulated and combined to create the designs that were applied to custom fabric, wallpaper, and wood, etc.

The larger format black and white prints are digital collages of graphite drawings, made from the direct observation of marble statues and street sculptures in Florence, Italy. I reference the layering of content, context and image, subverting the initial forms to a point where the origin is indistinguishable.

This work was the beginning of a larger path within my work, and created visual art making language that has influenced my understanding of the complexity in identity for the ancestrally tangled. I have come to utilizing abstraction as a metaphor for the way I relate to my identity, and a means of creating contemporary passageways to ancestral.