I'm in the process of my thesis work...the making and the writing. The work is about how individual and collective memory shapes identity. Using a narrative approach, I trace my own family history in an attempt to address universal concepts in a personal context.
The questions "Who am I" and "Who are we?" are central throughout our lives. According to Marita Sturken, in a paper on the Politics of Video Memory, "The search for identity represents a search for stability, community, and a home". Identity is constructed through the remembrance of certain historical moments, as well as through the forgetting and rescripting of certain events. Yet, history outside of personal memory is somewhat elusive and intangible.
Using digitally collaged photographic imagery printed on a series of large-scale fabric panels, I explore the stories of triumph and hardships experienced by a seemingly common Midwestern American family.
In my research, I came across these words from Deena Metzger's book, Writing for Your Life. It's a quote from members of a traveling Jewish theater:
"Stories move in circles. They don't go in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when you're lost, you start to look around and to listen."
If only I could quite myself long enough to listen to the still, small voices of those who came before me. The ones who's lives paved the way for my own. The ones whose imprint is on my very DNA.
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