Show and tell, 2025
Video
297 seconds
Artist’s Statement
Show and tell is a performative self-portrait in which I inhabit and deconstruct myself as a subject and a storyteller.
Inspired by the absence of my childhood memories and the insistent urge to prove my own identity, this performance explores how trauma distorts memory and the body’s ability to remember trauma even when the mind does not.
I sit at a small school desk, my adult body fitting awkwardly. I am barely able to move my legs. This physical confinement is uncomfortable, much like the psychic tension I am prepared to unleash. I wear a blue mask made from beads, candle wax, and shards of glass. It shields me as I tell this story. In fact, it seems to carry the memory, and I truly feel I do not have the courage to recall on my own if the mask is not on my face.
The glass embodies the nature of the memory and the emotions associated with it. There is no thinking when I touch the glass, only a strong desire to be at peace. The use of my voice in the performance adds another layer of narration, a different way of telling my story. The narration sits between remembering and inventing, between testimony and silence, trying to confess, to find some grounding logic. And the camera is there as a witness, to protect, to consume, or perhaps to violate me all over again.
