My work begins with family photographs, fragments of memory sent to me by my mother. Through interviews with her, I began to notice how she selectively edits our family history, often covering over memories she prefers to leave unspoken.
These oral histories complicate my emotional readings of the images and reveal the instability of personal memory, opening up space for reinterpretation through storytelling. Rooted in the concept of ‘fabulation,’ as theorized by 20th century French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and expanded by authors David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan, my practice embraces storytelling as a method for resisting fixed realities and imagining alternative perspectives.
As a prison arts educator working with incarcerated individuals across Illinois, I witness first-hand how people inside and their families use photographs and stories as lifelines, acts of love, resistance, and proof of existence in the face of carceral erasure. Much like the ghostly impressions in my practice, their memories must navigate absence and disruption. In this shared space of vulnerability and imagination, ‘fabulation’ becomes a method of reclaiming personhood and creating counter-archives.
My practice bridges personal and collective memory, inviting viewers to question what constitutes truth within visual and historical narratives. Through layers of fiction and recollection, I offer a visual language that embraces distortion, absence, and the limits of representation, foregrounding storytelling as a powerful tool for resistance, repair, and reimagining.
As a prison arts educator working with incarcerated individuals across Illinois, I witness first-hand how people inside and their families use photographs and stories as lifelines, acts of love, resistance, and proof of existence in the face of carceral erasure. Much like the ghostly impressions in my practice, their memories must navigate absence and disruption. In this shared space of vulnerability and imagination, ‘fabulation’ becomes a method of reclaiming personhood and creating counter-archives.
My practice bridges personal and collective memory, inviting viewers to question what constitutes truth within visual and historical narratives. Through layers of fiction and recollection, I offer a visual language that embraces distortion, absence, and the limits of representation, foregrounding storytelling as a powerful tool for resistance, repair, and reimagining.