Trying To Put It All Back Together Again
This body of work uses absurdity and weight to address the challenges of undoing the harm caused by extraction and colonial legacies, utilizing inherited gold family jewelry and the metaphorical weight of this (and other kinds of) intergenerational inheritances. Trying to return these metals to the rocks they were extracted from. This work connects the gold we choose to wear on our bodies with the ghost of the slag or the extra weight of this rock discarded in the mining process, a weight potentially measured in the tons. Through the work I asks do we carry this weight around with us on our necks and in our pockets, when we wear the gold that it was extracted from? This work clamps family gold jewelry into pieces of quarts that are scraps from the countertop industry. Gold is often found in quartz veins. The clamping is itself a forced gesture of return, highlighting that healing is not simply a gesture of return or undoing.
But still asks, can we return the gold to the hills? Can we heal the traumas, dislodge the weight?