statement

My oil paintings examine the longing for identity and the subsequent expectations associated with identity and memory. I question how identity is constructed through images, place, memory, decoy, and the miniature.

 

My interest in the image as a ground of identity and memory stems from the personal struggle to understand and cope with my identity and past as an adopted child. At times, I see myself as living two separate lives. This feeling of separation, disconnection, and the recent reunification of my pasts have played an important role in my work. Growing up, I had always imagined my biological family. I developed a set of overtly idealized images. I contrived expectations of who and what they could be and kept these ideals as stand-ins for them. Finding my biological family left the conundrum of the stand-in versus the real. I found myself the questioning the replacements and thus asking again Who am I? In my artworks, I turned to images and their relationships to “originals.” The burden of longing for something at an unattainable distance in both memory and reality has been an important struggle within my work.

 

I began working with the miniature farm set from my childhood and began taking photographs, often with dramatic and intense lighting. The translation of these photo-scenes to oil paint on panel unwound the knot of certain relationships that I wanted to address visually. I realized not only that identity was based on much more than biology but also that there was a different level of distance necessary to the penetration and manipulation of these issues than the microscopic. The miniature acts as a replacement not only for the childhood ideal memory but transcends that particular moment to stand for other instances. These methods of working with the miniature and photography allowed me to distance myself, yet at the same time create an idealized nearby place for my longing.

 

In recent work I have been using decoys as stand-ins for the “real” as I once used miniatures. The decoys are another way to think about the “real and ideal” and the relationship between human and animal. I am also interested in human expectations concerning our relationships with animals. Our imagining of animals stems partly from our cultural environment and can be linked to our imagining of self and family. There is a longing to know our selves through animals. Animals make us more human.

 

 I have also always been interested in the metaphorical implications of simulation and mimesis. The decoys are life-sized, meant to mimic nature and often used in hunting to lure in or get closer to wild animals. I have been thinking a lot about how humans long to be closer to nature and continually return to it as a place of rejuvenation as we become increasingly detached from the natural world. Yet actual closeness with wild animals is difficult or nearly impossible to achieve except in captivity. I use the decoys as metaphors for my own feelings of detachment from family, nature, memory and my own natural roots and my desire to feel connected.

 


kendrabulgrin@mac.com © Kendra Bulgrin 2012