Matrilineal is an ongoing photographic project that expands upon my artistic engagement with nostalgia while integrating the personal into my artistic practice. This project is about myself, my mother, and the women who came before me. It is an exploration of matrilineality, inheritance, and the ways in which family history is carried, concealed, and revealed across generations. With investigations into my own genealogy, a photographer/sitter relationship with my mother, and the discovery of deep family secrets, I am making a body of work surrounding a complex relationship between my mother and me.
This work exists at the intersection of autobiography and broader cultural resonance. While it is deeply personal, it engages with a few broader questions: What do we inherit beyond blood? How does generational trauma shape identity? How can trauma be addressed with empathy through art?
Ultimately, I seek a visual space where grief, tenderness, and discovery coexist. I am honoring the resilience and hardship my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother, and so on, have experienced. This project aims to heal and make sense of the obstacles we have each faced in our lives individually and together, as well as express the empathy that I have for my mother.