Where the Waves Begin, 2019

Printed silk, carved, burnt and stained silky oak hanger

With a nod to tasseography, ritualistic marks are collated and printed onto a silk veil, hung from carved, burnt silky oak stained with blood, holy water, weed pigment and ink. I draw with both hands simultaneously, focusing on my body and the environment as intertwined sites of ineffable biography. I have had to learn to walk again, and my pelvis, like the land it stands on, is a contested site holding trauma. As I work, untold histories unfold, silences end, alternative records emerge, and I see why I was made to believe I came from no place.

Mother’s Day, I found a mummified sea snake in the shape of infinity at the edge of the ocean.

I buried it in the dunes under coloured cliffs, where the earth heaves with the breath of women who send all that was made back to the sea. They took the infinite mother snake, pushed her back to the place where the waves begin. My mother has been in my cupboard for two years.

I took her bones and put them in the ocean at this place, earth heaving, women pushing, waves smashing, a death, a birth, oceans from my eyes accompanying her.

I thought when I did this I’d know something new, but I felt only that I knew less, closer to nothing. A skin shedding and my warm breath disappearing in a cold wind.

This banner heralds a biography of unseen and ineffable experiences. The history of my feminine body rewritten into a place where it was expected to remain untold.