Circle of Life I
Mixed media (Cyanotype print of prenatal Ultrasound scan photo and hair), 38 x 38 inches
This is the first out of three from my Cyanotype Print serial with my personal prenatal scan photos. I collected and sewed my lost hair around the blueprint in a circular motion. Alopecia is the condition I suffered post-natal due to hormone imbalance and the emotional turmoil of bereavement. My hair is an extension of my body, it embodies my emotion, the action of sewing is cathartic and the pattern is repetitive, somehow the process of making feels like a spiritual ritual. The work reveals the dialectic between love and loss, life and death.
Circle of Life II
Cyanotype prints on cotton, 39 x 50 inches
With this work, I am exploring the emotion, such as anxiety associated with motherhood. Nine blue circles present nine months of gestation in full pregnancy, the moment the baby is born, they are separated from the mother and become its own person. According to Freud, castration fears for women, the imaginary scenario takes the form of losing her most precious possessions, her narcissistic object - her child (Freud 1933), this work is an emblem of mothers' castration anxiety.
Circle of Life III
Mixed media, cyanotype print on fabric (71 x 59 inches), and Watercolour print of hair on tiles 51 x 35 inches
This installation comprises two components. Suspended on the wall are 12 circular Cyanotype prints of my hair, prenatal ultrasound scan images, and plants on Calico, underneath laying 4 panels of blue watercolor hair print on tiles.
Maternal passion oscillates between life and death, self and other, culture and nature. The circle is a perfect shape for life, the shape of the womb, 12 circular prints are suspended in the voids by delicate red threads, which signify the fragility and ambivalence of maternal love. As feminist theorist Julia Kristeva describes “ pregnancy is narcissistic, harboring of an unknown, shapeless, pre-object”(Kristeva2005). However, in this metamorphous process of pregnancy, there is maternal love, that allows others to be separated, to survive. Tiles on the floor and cotton sheets precariously hung over the wooden pole, they brought domesticity into this installation, the juxtaposition visualizes this feminine psychological dynamics.
Diffraction
Cyanotype print of mammogram and ink drawing, 14 x 10 inches
The title of this work, "Diffraction" explained through the perspective of quantum physics, is the interference pattern that occurs when a multitude of waves encounter an obstacle, the similar methodology was employed in the process of producing my mammogram. The ink drawing of the wavy pattern is closely against the cyanotype print of the mammographic image, this is my attempt to make the invisible visible, to provoke diffractive thinking which means stepping out of the phallogocentrism and seeing "the interference patterns on the recording films of our lives and bodies" (Haraway1997).
Untitled
Mixed media, ink body print and Acrylic, 20 x 30 inches
It is a print of a mother's body - my body, with saggy post-breastfeeding breasts and visible multi-Caesarean Section scars. The work reflects the trauma of motherhood. I think there is something sacred about using your own body as a tool to create, our skin is like a human screen, experiences and memories recorded in moments of the present. Fragmented body prints and the loss of boundaries hide the desire for a complete stable self.
