Her pursuits are rooted in the interconnected principles of the collective consciousness. With a profound belief in the moral responsibility of examining the self/universe, she channels her creative energies toward building bridges between individual narratives and the universe.
Her pursuits are rooted in the interconnected principles of the collective consciousness. With a profound belief in the moral responsibility of examining the self/universe, she channels her creative energies toward building bridges between individual narratives and the universe.
Short Film + Sound Design
Lady of the Wild Cows
My grandmother has told me this story since I was a child: of creekwater and soap, of hands raw from scrubbing, of a young girl carrying too much, too early. She survived, and went on surviving, into her nineties. Now, as her memory thins, she’s begun to ask for things - eating what she craves, being “selfish” in ways she never allowed herself before.
Re-enacting her memory in my childhood home is my way of entering that story, of holding it in my body and making sense of the tension: between the fear of losing the version of her I’ve always known, and the wonder of watching her shed the roles of “good wife” and “good mother” that kept her in a constant state of self-sacrifice. I offer this re-performance in hopes that I preserve this memory, so I can remember on her behalf, as she goes on forgetting.
I named this piece Lady of the Wild Cows, after Ninsun, the wise and nurturing mother of Gilgamesh in the Mesopotamian epic. Gilgamesh embarks on a futile quest for immortality, desperate to preserve what he loves. In this work, I recognize that same impulse in myself. But through it, I’m learning to understand that immortalizing memory is a kind of control. and that forgetting, can be a kind of freedom.
This is for my ngiema: the girl at the creek, the woman who gave everything away, and the self she’s finally keeping.