Together Again, RAIR Philly Residency, Philadelphia, USA, 2022

Mixed-media installation, variable dimensions
Atelier Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2022
Produced during residency at RAIR Philly

During my four-week residency at RAIR Philly, I built my concept around family photographs that I picked up at the dumpsite at Revolution Recovery (a waste management company in North East Philadelphia). I considered these pictures a starting point, which led me to focus on collecting domestic objects that hold personal histories — salvaging images and items before they were crushed into large piles, loaded into trailers, and taken to landfill. My selection was guided entirely by the emotional charge of each object. I collected dozens of family photos, albums, projector slides, scrapbooks, personal notes, death certificates, eviction notices, kids’ toys, various pieces of furniture, home appliances, and equipment.

During my days at the dumpsite, I watched front-end loaders brutally and systematically crush everything into a single mound of fragments. In that process, personal histories are wiped once and for all — and I found myself pondering the possibility of reconstructing them.

I carefully obscured any features or names that could identify specific people and pieced the various objects together in ways that no longer serve their original purpose, reconstructing a surreal, hallucinatory narrative. To me, all objects in that context become archives registering detached histories. I assigned them a new voice in an attempt to investigate the relationship between materiality, death, and memory.