I needed to examine the silenced experiences of my childhood. Ignored and forgotten, years of my life had been swept away, never to be acknowledged. These memories, like crumbs that were swept into the floorboards, crumbs eventually covered by rugs; the rugs became stories of replacement. My memories were traded for the pretense of perfection in order to create the flawless family snapshot.
My need to express these invisible behaviors and how I felt as a child took various forms. I obsessively wrapped objects, examined the scars and the holes this left in my life, and I opened my eyes to the disintegration of my family. Looking back at my perceived role as the person needed to hold the broken pieces together, driven to protect our family from all judgment that might potentially poke a hole into our ideal image.
I intuitively gathered objects that I was drawn to and then I contemplated their role in my childhood and family dysfunction. I then began to recreate some of the compulsive behaviors by binding these pieces until they no longer had a useful function.
I took my emotional scars and began to make them visible by wrapping my own body and creating temporary scars. I experimented to give my body the holes and missing pieces that I have discovered in my life.
With my anger, I conveyed the deterioration of my childhood by going back to some of the painful events that felt so much to me like empty shells and destroyed them; only futilely attempt to piece them together again.
I needed to give form to the years of my past that had no voice. The stories that were confined within the walls of our house needed break free and be expressed. When we have pieces missing in our histories, when we are lacking the integrity and structure of our immediate family, the holes that are left are gaping wounds; we watch the missing pieces become invisible disintegrating into dust.