Description
The American South is a place of legendary proportion. The site of dark histories and rich culture, the ghosts of the past are inherited by each generation and inform the cultural identity of those who call the South home. In the exhibition Dredge, I seek to explore the remnants of the past as they relate to collective heritage and cultural identity. Through nonlinear storytelling, the work examines my roots in search of understanding. I am interested in themes of gender, class, and race as I investigate both the privileges and burdens of being southern. As I excavate the many layers of my cultural identity as a white woman from the Deep South, I attempt to reconcile both personal and collective histories. Celebrating the things which draw us together, while acknowledging our often-difficult past, I seek to discover a counter-memory that can move past guilt and into reconciliation with our collective history. Using personal heirlooms, I share my familial ancestry while asking the question: "what else am I inheriting”?Through an interdisciplinary format centered on the use of ceramics, I choose materials for their inherent qualities and for the symbolism they provide. I work with both made and found objects, appropriating forms and images that are remnants of the past themselves. Personal intuition and play are driving forces in the act of creation, and I rely on rebellion, humor, memory, and nostalgia as fuel. I weave together colloquial language, the southern landscape, food culture, domestic objects, and heirlooms, responding to stories that relate to or illustrate aspects of my southern culture and identity. Heirlooms are an important part of my visual language. Many of the objects depicted represent those which have been passed down in my family from generation to generation. I examine the honor and weight of inheriting these objects both literally and symbolically. Whether depicted two-dimensionally as symbols or presented three-dimensionally as physical objects, they create the basis of my visual language. Through deconstructing this iconography, my feelings and thoughts about the South emerge. Dredge was installed in the SDSU University Gallery from April 17–26, 2017.
