Self-portrait - seeing oneself

I made this piece exploring my interests in Indian and Greek cosmology and how those epistemes were used to explain natural phenomena and complex human experiences and emotions, including my own.

The topic at hand, dealing with the ethics of human remains, reflects on the signification of Venus across various mythologies. Venus is associated with many asterisms and deities that are related to pink, a feminine colour for girls, specifically in contemporary times.

But upon further inspection, although pink is a colour delegated to girlhood, sexual naivety, youth and fertility, the usage of pink in contemporary also subtly exposes the dark side of this seemingly dainty and innocent colour.

Pink has become synonymous with mean girls, both the movie and the mean girl trope, who are, in fact, acting in alignment with "true feminity" both outwardly and inwardly; Venus is known as the evening star and as a diamond in the sky, which is also known for being inwardly harsh, heated and corrosive.

These themes all speak to me because I often find myself being infantilised and not taken seriously due to the way I express myself, even though I have the same amount of intensity as any other woman who is outwardly expressive, judgemental, or crude.

In Indian mythology, Venus, aka Shukracharya, is a male deity who happens to be aligned with the female principle; he is the only deity who has been given a mantra that is able to restore life into the dead. Shukracharya is also the teacher of beings of the netherworld, which is interesting when considering the fact that the body parts from autopsies that end up on display have been of prisoners and unclaimed bodies and human displays in a sense are immortalisation of the dead, which also ties to women as caretakers who are able to restore or destroy life.

Homage to the Departed – working with the Museum collections

I experimented with my intuition with mark-making, which was intentional yet intuitive. I played with the idea of water as a threshold and conduit for spiritual energy, particularly for the dead, where in many cultures, the dead were buried near bodies of water, as water symbolised the journey of the soul to the afterlife. Vegetation in those areas feeds off of the dead and releases important gasses into the atmosphere that, in a sense, returns the deceased back to a larger, interconnected existence. In some cultures, burial sites near water also symbolise the process of purification, which prepares the soul to move onto a new form of existence or incarnation.

Shadows of the Memory - monochrome past at Duggan Cronin Gallery

What drew me to recreating this photograph was the profound and intimate bond between a mother and her young child. This piece reflects the timeless beauty of maternal bonds and taps into the foundational human emotion of innocence, trust and safety that is felt in the embrace of a mother's arms.

Tracing the Past - Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre

Exploration and experimentation of the rich spiritual lives that the San people lived. There is no separation or distinction between the mundane and the sacred; everything is interconnected, bursting at the seams with life.

Reflections on the project (May 2024)

This project has improved my practice by helping me connect with other like-minded artists from different artistic backgrounds and use various techniques. It has helped me break out of my comfort zone by taking a more experimental approach to how I create work; it has also given me the confidence to follow my instinct instead of sticking to the same monotonous techniques and ways of approaching my art.

I learned so much about the rich heritage of Kimberley, much of which is not limited to institutions like museums. Consequently, there are many different ways of thinking about preserving and envisioning heritage. I found the conversations about death to be a bit challenging since most of us have had personal experiences with the dead or dying. Still, it helped us reflect on our cultural beliefs and practices and how they inform how we preserve or don't preserve or honour the dead. I liked that the project topic was stimulating, challenging and engaging. Death is simultaneously outside of our comfort zone, yet something we have all encountered in some form. Thinking about the nuances of the cultural practices of such a sensitive topic helped us make stronger, more impactful and more intentional art. Also, going out to see rock art out in nature was amazing; being in the natural environment where the rock art was made, outside of a museum, trying to piece together how former societies would have made the art and incorporate that into our practice was something special.

Following the programme, I have been offered a job at the McGregor Museum. At the moment, I am doing research on early farming communities. Then, I will use this information to paint some of the dioramas and make the models that will be shown in the  Museum.