ENLACED

My work is an investigation of my past and my own tattered recollection of it through self-portraits and the continual use of lace. Remembering the past and trying to figure it out remain to haunt me and my work. Although some photographs illustrate near-perfect compositions with hardly any dirt shown on my skin or wrinkles in the dress I’m wearing, the past that I’m referencing is uncontrolled, dirty, and tattered. Throughout my images, I often photograph myself wearing a lace dress or that which resembles lace. In others, lace acts as the subject, almost as a stand in for myself, or as an absence that is present. For me, lace acts as a safety net, something I can hide in where the past won’t find me. It also illustrates my futile attempts to understand myself and my own inner conflict with my working method as an artist. Though my finished prints are clean and without blemish, the initial ideas of my work develop from gaping holes and missing pieces, very much like that of the fabric of lace. In some images, I try to cover up the dusty walls of an abandoned house – a futile attempt in the least. There’s no way I can cover up what I’m trying to hide underneath; the holes of the lace reveal the dirt, the decrepit wall and the decay that will forever remain. Throughout my work, I have identified with the characteristics of lace and its delicate nature, the holes that are never filled (much like the gaps of recollection) and the feminine qualities it has carried throughout history. As a working artist who is also a female, lace also acts as a metaphor for myself. Through the incessant use of lace I attempt to convey themes of the past and present, the tattered and the fading and how these ideas interlace with my personal life and the parts of it that fade, or are tattered, over time.