Raised in a tight-knit world of feminist women, I navigate my identity performance via the influence of generations of women before me. Using lines from my sister’s poetry, hands from my mom’s mom, and clothing passed down from the women in my family, I articulate my gender dissociation and homesickness in an effort to reclaim my body as home. The inherited articles, while signifying distinct modes of self expression, are also submerged in a murky environment which is in fluid, gestural transition.

They are in conversation with piecemeal paper-cast figures in an installation that pivots around trying to find a sense of placement. 

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I drowned my clothes because I was tired of wearing them, I painted them to confront their inflated significance in my life and on my body. Through loving, arduous processes such as oil painting, plaster casting, and paper making, I meditate on my personal gender identity. I aim to promote a conversation about what the transparency of our gender through clothing keeps obscured about our complicated, individual personalities. 

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The title heimlich is in reference to Freud’s theory of the uncanny, as synonymous with unheimlich, unhomey, and revealed. In this series, I revisit the heimlich part of my life when my own identity wasn’t relevant, concealed beneath a warm blanket of protective women. There is humor in what it means to be trying to find home as a queer person when being queer is an inescapably uncanny experience.