“Self-Inflicted Anesthetization” | 36″ x 90″ | Pokeweed and Amaranth Ink on drawing paper
Text Reads:
“A mad woman taken from her husband and children. Of course she was mad, or she would not have given her grief words in that public place. Her keepers were along. What she said was rational enough, pathetic, at times heart-rending. It excited me so I quietly took opium. It enables me to retain every particle of mind or sense or brains I have, and so quiets my nerves that I can calmly reason and take rational view of things otherwise maddening.”
Mary Boykin Chesnut, from her Civil War Diaries
Inquiry: How might this piece become sculptural, rolled up on a drum, to be moved easily across a colonial desk? And how might it become a performance? And documentation of meditative act?
Older Work thinking about the same idea—
“Dismantling” (2022) | Photographs, 13″ x 19″ each
How do white people undo generations of anesthetizing ourselves? Of turning away when something is uncomfortable? I am the link between my ancestors and descendents and I aim to create a new legacy for my kids. Using my baby bib as a symbol of the desensitization that past generations have placed onto me, I have dismantled it, taking it apart thread by thread.