The conceptual frame of my work originates from the investigation of ritual and trauma through the presence and absence of the maternal body. This is then visualized through a series of mediated rituals.  This occurs either within my artistic process itself or within the final work through symbols of recuperation and continuance.  Ritual can allow contribution and participation in the world around us. Here ritual is functioning as a singular and private act; under the burden of grief and trauma embedded within instinct or what I call the matrilineal ghost. 

The matrilineal ghost concept provides a container for collective and personal history that becomes visible as instinct.  It is a space that continues to evolve through the interrogation of traumatic moments. It is the space where residue, marks and traces can be found or the way in which memory and trauma imprint on the present.  The matrilineal ghost encourages a position that the psychical and corporeal bodies are perpetual and that one supports the other partly through the uncanny and repetition toward our own origin.  By this I mean that they exist as the same yet divided realm of space and time.  The energy between helps the other exist; each desires the other through a language of trauma. One becomes more aware of the matrilineal ghost through the absence of the maternal body. Yet it is much more. 

As a continuation of these ideas, this new body of work turns to literature as a source of visualization.  Literature is riddled with dead or otherwise missing mothers.  I have chosen A Very Easy Death (Simone de Beauvoir) for the beginning for this new work.

 A Very Easy Death consists of 12 pairs of transparent images.  Each pair, hung one behind the other, is illuminated with a single light source. By its nature, the transparency is weightless and is affected by those who encounter it.  In essence, the work is moving image projected on the wall.  The image is perpetually moving, most often fragile and alters the physicality of space and time.  The projected images consist of shadow, texture, decay and absence with the first image. For these images, the camera was placed on the ground.  This was done for the sake of a marked horizon line between life and death.  I retyped the book and used the text to create the second image.