EXCAVATION
Excavation is driven by an urge to know, to surface what has been buried, covered over, or carefully left out of the frame. Working with clay pigment ground from rocks sourced at a historically painful site of colonial rule in South Africa, I draw the material itself into the reckoning, excavating memories, dreams, and feelings about my past and ancestry. This is not about blame; it is about the possibility of healing from trauma that lingers long after the events that caused it. Returning to family albums and childhood photographs, I ask not only what was kept but what was never recorded, and whose version of events the remaining images were assembled to protect.
Through cyanotypes, hand-stitching, and chemical transformations of the photographic surface, I embrace imperfection, including my own. The stitch mends what is fractured but leaves the scar visible, unlike the family photograph that presents itself as whole.
As I have said: "I have to be prepared not to like what I might find, and in the process of getting to something that has been buried, it is important to take care of how I extract the experience."
