CASA LÜ, mEXICO CITY 2024

I was lucky enough to join Casa Lü’s August residency programme for one month in the heart of Mexico City. After weeks of developing new work in the studio and absorbing the city’s cultural sights, we concluded our stay with a final exhibition, entitled ‘Atypical Archeologies’; encompassing the wide range of topics and mediums we were all digging deeper into.

In Atypical Archeologies, I created a triptych of paintings interlinked with velvet ribbon, entitled ‘Gut Feeling’. This piece continues my enquiry into origin stories. Nearly every culture has its own mythology that aims to answer essential existential questions, such as; who are we? Where did we come from? And, how did the world come to be? These imaginative answers are often attempted by starting at the very ‘beginning’. It seems integral to the human psyche to create these narratives for survival, finding meaning and to even seek control.

In this work I am excavating my own origin story. Having experienced maternal grief at such a young age, identity and belonging is an enduring question in my life. In addition to my own lived experiences, I know there to be the trans-generational stories I have inherited from my family line. It is my understanding through epigenetics and therapeutic plant medicines that generational trauma is not an explicit memory in the conscious mind, but rather tension that lives in the body. My own realisation has been that this (trauma) information is held strongly in my gut, which this piece takes its namesake. The image of the umbilical cord surfaces strongly in my mind's eye, connecting this painful place in my body to my mother, to her mother and on and on. A vision that is deeply resonant for me, creating a more intuitive understanding of my own nature and opening a dialogue with the mother I never got to know.

In my experience, inviting ways to release trauma (stories) stored in the body is deeply cathartic. Allowing toxic patterns and generational cycles to break and somewhat resolve. Maybe we do not ever truly heal, but by opening our awareness to all the stories within us, we can bless what is broken and honour what has come before.