One persistently exists between conditions, oscillating, perpetually crossing the borders of habit.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I draw to write, and write to draw. Each medium limits and offers secrets to be discovered. In the images, in the crevices of the lines, is a world of colour, materials, forms, and traces of unrestricted human habitation. In the words, translated from many languages, is the attempt to express these observations and move them beyond their visual predictability. It is a process of constantly translating myself across the limits I encounter in each form of expression. Living within the ebb and flow of the joy of discovery and the restrictions of my ability creates an ongoing negotiation that challenges segregation and the parceling of thought. In such a context one persistently exists between conditions, oscillating, perpetually crossing the borders of habit. It is a rich existence that defies the comfort of stale meaning. It is an ongoing and delicate balance between loss and discovery. The confluence of loss and discovery underlie many of the themes investigated to date in my work, which include identity and estrangement in the context of post-war reconstruction and exile; architecture and justice; memory in the scarred body and the voicing of political experiences in public space.
Dissecting the Red Cocoon
These images form part of a series produced during the Babel, Babble, Rabble: On Language and Art Visual Arts Residency at The Banff Centre. The original story, by Kobe Abe, deals with the isolation and adaptation of one who questions the ownership of space. Unable to find a place to call his own, his exclusion forces him to exist on the boundaries formed by the lines of confrontation with society. In The Red Cocoon, this line is a filament that the protagonist’s body forms as he unravels in the face of constant rejection. Dejected, his body appropriates itself and weaves its flesh into a shelter. In this new form, he finally finds a home when a policeman, the representative face of authority, takes him to his son’s toy box.
These images draw out this essay as a way to explore the spaces we inhabit and the alienation they impose. In many, it is the act of writing and rewriting the story, not the written words to be read by others, that directs the process. It is an act of listening to the hand as it gestures the words, slowly, repetitively, waiting to awaken a dormant discovery.
Captive
The initial words for these pieces are guttural screams. As visual images, they are silenced reactions. After weeks of reports on abuse in prisons, a newscast showed beautiful young Middle Eastern women returning to their villages and homes. They smiled in the fresh air at the novelty of their freedom. I wondered how long these smiles last before these women become targets of exclusion in their community because of their experiences of abuse in prisons. The series Captive explores the role of the violent and violated feminine body. The reflective piece is used to generate text on the long-term experiences following confinement of women in war.
Excavations of Beirut Landscapes
These images form part of the exhibit displace/graft/retrace. The drawings emerged from the experience of witnessing the space of Beirut, Lebanon in its many forms before, during and after its 15-year war from 1975-1990. These particular images explore the unresolved existence oscillating between the dangerously manipulative memories of a lost place and the difficulty of adaptation to new cultures and their accompanying space. The text they fed took the form of a letter to the city of Beirut that was published in the book Memory and Architecture, (ed. E. Bastea.)
Image Gallery
Dissecting The Red Cocoon
Captive
Excavations of Beirut Landscapes
