Date of Submission

Spring 2012

Academic Program

Dance

Project Advisor 1

Leah Cox

Abstract/Artist's Statement

My body is a document of history, and history is a tricky thing. This history is a collection of myths, some created by me and some for me. Looking back, I have been struggling with a personal history, both social and secret, since the beginning. The myth serves to heal the realities of our past, and to validate our behavior in the present. If healing is not achievable, the myth itself must be altered or reincarnated to satisfy our emotional needs.

This body of work exits as a series of self-portraits regardless of initial artistic intentions.

I am inside it. We are inside it.

These containers of flesh and blood and bone house the physical present and the emotional past, each second encased in our biology, each experience transcribed in the structure of our cells. Amazing that so much can fit in something so small.

I am interested in the intersection of power and privilege, of limitless compression and expression, of intimacy and abandonment. My work questions attitudes and traditions of community, acts of aggression, moments of forgiveness, and the complications of memory. My memory is a pathway of internal history, collected from scraps of evidence left behind. Memory is loving my body as it existed, as it will never exist again. I am a complex system of strengths and weaknesses, of desire and information.

And in this space of tension and imperfection, I continue to cultivate my home in the world.

We move with our past, with our promises.

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