In my art practice, I work in self-narrative modes of drawing, comics, animation and more recently textiles, to explore issues of queerness, affect, trauma and memory. I approach drawing, not as a way to render realistic likenesses, but rather as a method to re-think my own lived experience. I am interested in how we, as young children, make sense of who are and who we might become, at a time before we have all of language. Picturing fragments of memory offers glimpses into the affect of childhood. I want to make visible those ways of being that have been shut out of consciousness, pressured into hiding or actively discouraged. I support this practice of re-thinking the self through drawing with a parallel practice in scholarly reading of critical theory. –MN |