About family.
Landscape and Identity
"The associations between memory and landscape permeate our understanding of who we are, giving us a sense of identity, security and belonging. To belong and to identify is a basic human need and desire."
In 2015, cancer found both my mother and father. The following year was filled with complications and illness from treatment. I found myself on the road during much of that time traveling from Atlanta to Birmingham. While on the road by myself, I began to notice my surrounding landscape and the feelings it invoked more than I had before. I realized that the landscape, both natural and man-made, had started to become a part of my story. My identity. I became increasingly interested in how the landscape shapes our individual and collective sense of self/selves and in turn, how we shape the landscape to mirror our ideals.
Through imaginary, man-made and constructed environments, I am able to place myself and family within a larger context of the unknown while seeking healing, order, the nurturing of life and perhaps a rebirth of the body and soul. These reconstructed landscapes created from familial imagery give me solace in my search for identity.
“Any landscape is the condition of the spirit.” ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
Mellow Yellow, 2016
Joyful Rebirth, 2016
Melancholy in Your Shadow
8mm - 1969/2016
Les Blondissimes : 36 Years
Unique Lumen/Cyanotypes
As my mother's treatment progressed and her body rid of disease, she started to collect her hair in bag, rather than throw it away. I never understood her desire to keep this artifact of her identity, but I became interested in her act of doing so and asked her to save the remains for me until all the hair was gone. Out of love and my attempt to also hold on to the past, I create a series of 36 original lumen and cyanotype chemigrams. The original prints are unique and can never be reproduced and are memorials that are symbolic of the opportunity for regrowth and metamorphosis. Although seemingly grotesque I often seek to find and create beauty out of the crude and cast out.
People you May Know
Facebook has become a virtual graveyard, a phenomenon that wasn’t heavily considered upon its launch as a connection for the living in 2004. It has now transformed into a space to connect the living to those who have passed, as there is an estimated 30 million people who’s virtual book of faces has outlived them. For many, this virtual immortality is a painful reminder, but for others, the space is celebrated through posts, tags, birthday wishes and other tributes.
My interest in the archive has led me to join this commemoration. Posthumous Facebook profile photos have been composed, suspended and arranged as a memorial “cloud.” Each unique nebula is a rearranged, layered and fragmented slice of digital data derived from friends, family and “people I may have known,” who have passed from earthly existence. The celestial form is my celebration and examination on how the web is changing the life and meaning of memory after death.
Kibbee 2016
Conversations with Ourselves and Others
