the breakdown project
This work is a re-envisioning of two previous bodies of work. To see the before's check out:
"Over and Over"
and
"tell me something else"
"Over and Over" is an exploration of my understanding of the masculinity that I grew up with focused on my two closest/most impactful male relatives. - my dad and my maternal grandfather. The journey with these images began in 2011. Both men had relationships with small airplanes, and because of that from a young age, so did I. These crop dusters painted with missing sections attempted to create an image of positive masculinity even in relationships that were incomplete due to distance or chronic illness. I needed a way of leaning into that masculinity as my own trans masculine identity was coming into fruition. Even with the missing parts, the planes still flew. I completed this series of paintings in 2012. Or so I thought. Time, experiences and new knowledge has shifted how I view both of these relationships.
In 2016, I began my recovery as a survivor of incest and childhood organized sexual abuse. My father was NOT a perpetrator in any way, but he also didn’t see. My grandfather, on the other hand, was a large player in the abuse that I lived through from ages three to twelve. I started adding flowers to these works just last yearb(2024) and very slowly. The chosen flowers are ones that are beautiful and a part of my childhood. Some feel like parts of the past that I needed to leave. Others are like the resilience I have recognized in myself as a survivor and a queer person. The flowers in combinations with the planes are the part of me that fly, that survived, that wound up somehow whole despite my experiences. There is more for me to explore. More planes to add flowers to. And always more healing to walk into. Painting has always been a balm in hard times and continues to be a navigation into the unknown next.
But sometimes the only balm with work and people whom you thought cared for you is to let them disappear.
The Breakdown Project started in the summer of 2020. A sweet friend had been storing the paintings from "This is what waiting looks like" which is also my MFA thesis work from 2008. It is some of the very few pieces of work that I have ever done that are self-portrait based. The "breakdown" started when I decided to put the paintings in our yard. I just felt like I had changed so much since I had made those images, that perhaps it was time for them to reflect that. What I didn't expect was that what I really wanted was a new place to start. And to watch them devolve as I was evolving. And so I left them outside. It was a very dry year, and so that summer less than 4 inches of rain fell in our back yard. But the water and the sun started to do its work. It took 4 years, but by the end of that time, the paintings been taken by the elements. The MDF that they were pained on expanded and then fell apart. Leaving places for grass to grow over them, weeds to grow around them. I even attempted to add some seeds and potting soil to them, but only a few shoots came from that. All that is left of them. now are the slight footprints of their edges in our yard, and the one piece that I saved from the painting that lasted the longest.
As this was happening, I also went through some items that I had been holding onto. My father's oldest sister, was married to a man who was the same generation as my grandfather. Both had been WWII vets and both we sexual predators. Rape is a weapon of war. And I also believe that it comes home from the wars to continue to act as weapons on innocent bodies in those families. I have a terrible sense that there are likely many victims across Europe due to both of these men. Perhaps more due to my uncle than even my grandfather. He was sinister, secretive and violent. I was the unlucky one in our family (at least as far as I know) who was on the receiving end of his violence and on the trafficking ring that he was a part of - also a group of vets he was "friends" with.
I did not remember any of this until 2018. Too many years later to say or do much of anything except try to heal the damage gifted to me by my biological family's long history of trauma and abuse. At least where I am concerned, I am breaking that cycle. I do not have children, but I also am not a perpetrator due to what I experienced. It is an all to common idea that "hurt people hurt people". I think that actually there are people emboldened by their male privilege and lack of social accountability that make some people more likely to take advantage of and hurt others. We want an easy explanation. But in some ways, there are none.
When he died, my uncle left his stamp and coin collection to me. The vast majority of this collection is one that he stole from a Nazi officer's home while he was in Germany. He also passed along all of his military emblems and items that he received as a part of his uniform. I have carried these items with me often at a loss for what to do with them. In 2021 I figured out that they needed to leave. And they really needed to leave by fire. I systematically documented every piece of that collection. All that remains now are the stamps and the coins. The rest along with a box that my grandfather left me is now ash. I filmed and photographed burning all of it. And now that ash lives in 6 jars on a shelf in my studio. It's proof that nothing is permanent, not even the damage that we inflict on others who survive. I'm one of the lucky ones. I am privileged to have help and support to heal. Not everyone does. And not everyone actually survives.
There is another element to both parts of this work. And that is queerness. I survived the abuse in my childhood directly because I am a trans person. I knew who I was at my core, and that was already different. And so that identity - even without words to put to it- is part of the reason I survived and am a whole person today. I am not some violent threat to national security. I'm just a person who knows very clearly who they are and wants nothing more than to make the world better and add some beauty to it before I go.
I have no idea what the next few months (let alone years) will mean for myself and others like me, but we will not ever be completely erased. Our magic lives in this world even if people don't want to see it. And there will always be others no matter how hard the oppressor tries to stamp us out. We live on in each other even if we are not allowed to live our individual lives in peace or at all.