Proposal Abstract

My combined interest in psychology, anatomy, and memory has previously led me to explore the concept of embodied memory in my practice. Embodied memory is the idea that the human body physically records experiences and trauma in its cells, tissues, and genes. Recently, I have begun to examine the similar ways the environment and the human body processes and remembers trauma. Paralleling the system of the human body to the ecosystem, my work attempts to compare how both the Earth and body retain deep forms of memory in the atoms, molecules, and structures they are composed of. The idea that the environment has memory raises the question of the permanency of damage and pollution caused by human industry in the current epoch of the Anthropocene.

My work explores the anxiety, fear, and speculation about the future of the planet by imagining the world if global warming reaches its predicted negative climax of uninhabitable climate change, shrinking biodiversity, and unsustainability. Drawing inspiration from early anatomical illustrations, earth science diagrams, industrial and urban architecture; my prints, print-based installations and drawings engage with our anxieties, fears, and speculations about the health of the planet and the viability of the human species. The work explores the idea of systemic failure while drawing parallels between the biological, environmental, and man-made. The layering and juxtaposition of these references create speculative landscapes that are simultaneously strange and familiar, ruined and animate, geologic and bodily.