...like ashes like seeds like stars (2023)


A multisensorial installation using different forms of storytelling to re-connect with the social, political, and spiritual histories embodied in our human and more-than-human world. Photo (image) is myth through surfaces, writing is myth through interiority; materials are not myths, they are not believed into existence, but connection to materials may connect us to a collective memory, or suggest our absence in it.

This fluid space of memory is mapped by the relationships with the black mustard plant, its seeds, fire, ocean, sand,  paper, language, and  family photographs in this installation. As an exploration of by aesthetic strategies of decoloniality, this work invites storytelling and mythmaking as a mode of ritual repair; to re-member and re-connect with place, home, and community is the beginning of restoring rightful relationships with the land, with its past and present communities, and non-human kin.

Installation in the Little Gallery at UCLA in October 2023.