Obscured Images; Displacement and Remembering, 2023

Muslin fabric, ink, wooden dowel, thread.
Dimensions variable.

Reflecting on my personal childhood experience of migration as a refugee, I have investigated displacement, loss, fragmented memory, ‘otherness’, and a sense of being in-between cultures. Facts forgotten are nevertheless stored as embodied knowledge and I try to harness these in the creative process. 

An archive of old black and white photographs prompts memories and emotions. I revisit these images, searching for memories and insights through reprinting, altering the size, layering and obscuring. The work of degrading the fine muslin with sandpaper, bleach, scrubbing and rust reflects the trauma and fragility of displacement. The liminal quality of the material’s translucency is a metaphor for the in-between; between seeing and not seeing, between forgetting and remembering.