“Loneliness, roaming youths, violence and predators.

We were wild nocturnals in the dark, warm nights.

Summer left quickly

and before my 15th birthday, I got my hair cut short.

Strangely, that was something that hurt me the most.

In one of my dreams, I was in a Fatboy Slim video clip.

Christopher Walken and I danced.

All summer long I felt like I had no control of my life.

But at that moment, I felt invincible.

So I packed my suitcase and left my home country,

Because in that dream I scored Weapon of Choice.

Luck

and

strength

to run away and make my life my own.”

“Weapon of Choice”, an ongoing project, revisits a summer of violence and trauma that the artist experienced and witnessed at the age of 14.

A combination of digital and analog photography, collage, old photographs of self and text are used to delve deep into the author’s past experiences to somehow try to make sense of why this happened and the impact it has had on their lives to the present day.

The artist creates images that border the now and the past, visual representations of living with trauma, a world that moves between consciousness and subconsciousness in the space of memory and resistance.

Objects and colour have been used to symbolically portray victim and predator in this series. Blue bananas are used to portray the juvenile perpetrators referring to the Japanese phrase 青二才, literally blue two year old, used for immature young men. Pomegranate, similarly, is used to represent the stupidity of the victims as a ripe pomegranate is seen as a symbol of a daft person with their wide mouth open.

During the process of creating these works, the artist has attempted to recount the events she endured as a young woman through self portraiture and still life. She has reached into the depths of her psyche, pulling from these repressed memories, dragging up the past and facing that which has been with her for so long.

While haunting and at times difficult for the artist to recall and represent, “Weapon of Choice” also celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and acts as a vehicle of therapy and acceptance.