IT’S NO LONGER ABOUT YOU, I NO LONGER REMEMBER YOUR VOICE.
As an 18-year-old, I was in a sexually abusive relationship. It has forever changed how I view myself and sexuality. This work is a visual dive into my ever-changing perception of myself, my body, and the past. I believe this memory has haunted me for years, and I aim to capture its essence in this work.
Inspired by this ghost, my work focuses visually on the body and on textures used to imitate the physicality of sex. Using this imagery, my work plays with motifs of skewed memories, the performative nature of sexual desire, and my discomfort with sexual vulnerability.
I make references to female iconography that I believe held a lot of power in my sexual development: the Virgin Mary, emblematic of purity, and The Birth of Venus, an image of beauty and erotic idealisation.
Throughout this series, I use recurring images of body modification in the forms of piercings and tattoos. I was drawn to the concept of permanently altering one’s body, much like what I believe happened to me.
I created this work to focus purely on myself and my personal experience in the aftermath of coercive sexual abuse; it purposefully does not hold power or blame to any one person or event.
This work does not offer a concrete feeling or opinion on what happened. It lies in the in-between of feeling.
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