Growing up, close calls with my mother’s cancer and pain was just another part of the routine. My work stems from this familial history surrounding the constraints of pain, mortality of the body, and the lack of communication within those shared life experiences. As Elaine Scarry states in her book (The Body in Pain) "To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt,” it is not always a subject matter easily shared or understood. An individual's ability to fully comprehend another's pain will always fall short while this barrier still exists. It is in this absurd and ambiguous circumstance of pain's broken language I create new images and associations, aiding at least the visual language surrounding this phenomenon.
Isolated or abstracted moments of infliction upon and by the body ranging from uncomfortable surgical images to the subtle moment of a hand pinching, act as a stepping off point for the uncertainty and change felt within pain. These depictions are abstracted by means of isolation, scale, or composition, offering uncommon perspectives into how pain manifests in the body. New images impart new means of understanding, while simultaneously highlighting the distance between the subject matter and the viewer. In memory of my mother I aim to draw attention to, and narrow the gap between doubt and certainty, instead creating compassion rather than sympathy or pity for a person in pain.
Isolated or abstracted moments of infliction upon and by the body ranging from uncomfortable surgical images to the subtle moment of a hand pinching, act as a stepping off point for the uncertainty and change felt within pain. These depictions are abstracted by means of isolation, scale, or composition, offering uncommon perspectives into how pain manifests in the body. New images impart new means of understanding, while simultaneously highlighting the distance between the subject matter and the viewer. In memory of my mother I aim to draw attention to, and narrow the gap between doubt and certainty, instead creating compassion rather than sympathy or pity for a person in pain.