In this series, the artist wants to start a conversation about cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation and how the different cultural influences have affected what we recognize as our own culture.
Using driftwood and pebbles collected during meditative walks, she builds these “grafts” with the use of cotton thread, creating minimalist surreal sculptural amalgamations. Credible and yet magical.
This apparently simple piece is a very complex one where once again she manages to synthesize all that complexity.
Our identity is formed by multiple experiences that are threaded together. Our sense of “self” is something that must be constructed.
The selection of 2 materials, wood, and pebble, also talks about dualities of conscious and unconscious, male, and female, past and present.
It also talks about the constant clashes between principles such as liberty and equality, justice and mercy, impartiality and love and the search for a precarious equilibrium.
The bounding also signifies how relationships are held together and maybe a fear of separation and abandonment from the different influences that composes the “self”.
As a multiracial and multiculture individual herself, the artist confronts in this way the requirement of defining ourselves in only one category related to race, ethnicity, or sex.
Through the selection of materials, the artist is reminding us that, as a society or as individuals, we are deeply rooted to earth.
But, as society or as individuals, because of the exchanges produced by migration of people, thoughts, or culture, we are all grafts.
