The series Resilient Child represents a view of my childhood memories and war trauma that I experienced at age eleven. I deconstruct these memories and give them a physical representation through image making. 

In creating Resilient ChildI use previously owned garments, mostly from my own children. The used clothing has an emotional resonance attached to it; it has been touched, used and lived in. The textiles reveal their previous life in that the fabric is worn out and stained. These used fabrics give the work another dimension of emotion and meaning because the clothing comes from a family that is full of love and safety and these garments are now being used to communicate a much darker history. 

The images I produce are not rendered realistically and are somewhat vague much like my memory. They are rendered through a child’s point of view and that is where the simplicity and exaggerations come from. Memory is more about feelings than concrete truths; the images don’t need to be realistic as long as they communicate a feeling.

In recalling memory there are many missing pieces and often the process feels distant and intangible. I am never really sure if a memory is real or something that my mind made up. These events now exist as memories and the only way to express them is through image making; having a physical representation of things I experienced enables me to better process them. For me visual images are a formal language that give clarity and help express the absence of things in memory.

I have created images of people whom I remember from my experience of fleeing my home, living at refugee camps, and of my family becoming separated. By observing these characters, the viewer is able to experience some of the emotions that I have when I look back at that time in my life.