megan v soohoo 司徒詠梅
idea of being things you carry things you go through (installation - sculpture senior thesis) 2020 - 2021idea of being things you carry things you go through is a body of work that focuses on the traumatic childhood experiences I faced, spanning over two decades. I weave together personal writings, my family’s archives, and photographs of landscapes, portraiture, and the domestic space; elements which examine a disquieted adolescence afflicted by mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Forced to return home due to the Pandemic, I found myself confronting the place where prior traumatic events occurred. After spending fifteen months there, and now continuing this project away from home, this distance has given me clarity to live with a past that will always be with me.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
artist statement
My body of work is about the sense of disassociation and observation I feel towards my upbringing and culture. In taking control of my narrative, I give myself distance and allow this sense of perspective to inform each piece. There are spaces in my life I need to deal with and tackling them head on is what allows me to comprehend them. Once I’m able to reflect back to it and how I feel now, I gain a better appreciation of self and identity.
In using photographs and sculptures, I explore the dimensionality of mediums that can add to the concept of the work. In my senior thesis, idea of being things you carry things you go through, it explores similar topics to Teresa Eng’s Speaking of Scars. It requires confrontation and working through those moments where you weren’t able to better situate yourself. In creating this project, I reflect on moments that weren’t fully articulated at the time, as I was being physically silenced to not talk about them any further. The act of negligence of one's actions and overlooking its impact made it impossible for me to find the best way to express those concerns at the time. Using photographs to create visible flashes of time, and sculptures to accentuate its complexity, allows me to access and understand those experiences. Being allowed to explore aspects of myself in a healthy and vital way has made it easier to understand more in the ways that I was raised and how it contributed to how I identify now. To move forward in life, you have to touch base with those experiences that have affected your present or it will linger into the spaces of your future.
In using photographs and sculptures, I explore the dimensionality of mediums that can add to the concept of the work. In my senior thesis, idea of being things you carry things you go through, it explores similar topics to Teresa Eng’s Speaking of Scars. It requires confrontation and working through those moments where you weren’t able to better situate yourself. In creating this project, I reflect on moments that weren’t fully articulated at the time, as I was being physically silenced to not talk about them any further. The act of negligence of one's actions and overlooking its impact made it impossible for me to find the best way to express those concerns at the time. Using photographs to create visible flashes of time, and sculptures to accentuate its complexity, allows me to access and understand those experiences. Being allowed to explore aspects of myself in a healthy and vital way has made it easier to understand more in the ways that I was raised and how it contributed to how I identify now. To move forward in life, you have to touch base with those experiences that have affected your present or it will linger into the spaces of your future.
© megan soohoo