misnurture

I’ve always had moments of duality with my family. Moments that are good yet bad at the same time. Moments such as my father writing me a loving letter, saying how much he would miss me when I went away to college, and taping it to the back of the front door of our house for me to see before I left for college, only to act as a blockade, stopping me from leaving which is what I so badly wanted to do, despite the sincere and warm words scrawled across its surface.

 











Rope is a material that is strong. It can pull, tighten, tie, suspend, wrap, choke, drag, constrain. Yet once cut, it is deemed useless, no longer able to do what it was intended for. Using rope to suspend the eggs, while being frayed in the center, creates an uneasiness. They are each holding up such a heavy material, yet because of the cuts along them, they could fall at any moment, leaving everything to tumble to the ground.

It is these duel moments that have created the memories that my work stems from, where I have both negative and positive ties to certain objects, where I want to both destroy and adore them at the same time, yet I still keep them. Misnurture 1 is a culmination of these ideals, rooted deeply in this uncanny balance. Each element used is a representation of this wavering feeling to elicit these see-sawing emotions within whoever views it.




Eggs house life in its beginning stages, and the outsides are delicate and can easily break, especially if it were to fall, but cement is an everlasting material that is much harder to damage. The egg shape represents nurturing and fragility, yet is contrasted by the weight and suspension of the cement. Within each cement egg is an object of mine that holds a dual memory. The objects are both enveloped, yet entombed.






Each rope is attached to a rusty, old, patinaed pipe. The pipe appears to be decrepit and cannot sustain weight, yet it is made of steel and can handle the weight of the cement eggs plenty. Four eggs hang from this pipe, each at a different height, representing the hierarchy that which I view my family to be. The topmost, my father, the next one down, my mother, next my sister, and last my brother. And on the ground, beneath them all, lies a single egg. Me. And from this egg on the ground plays an audio track that contains audio of me crying in my car, talking about how much I wish for everyone to be okay, yet is contrasted by interrupting segments of my father being negative and aggressive, my mom crying and discussing the abuse she’s been through, and moments of my father and I laughing happily while watching The Three Stooges.








All of these contrasting elements come together to be harmonious yet disruptive to encapsulate the essence of what the objects within the eggs represent. That my family is both good and bad, and both of these qualities exist within them all simultaneously. And the single egg, me, lying beneath the other suspended eggs that could drop at any moment, my family, represents the hope I have that things will some way, somehow, get better. Despite the monotonous limbo that I find us all in, I have faith that we will all be okay.