Working Title: In Good Taste

Through the use of stop-motion animation, I create allegorical imagery of the body and contemplate the evolution of my identity, from my roots in the echo chamber of a small southern Christian town and the expanding perspectives gained since leaving.

This work includes a single channel video displayed on a large television and a series of framed paintings mounted on an adjacent wall. The video is a looping stop-motion animation showing short scenes of abstracted figures. This series of images are intended as illustrations of intergenerational trauma, referencing patterns of abuse and its influence on personal identity.

With the use of independent layers of the drawn line, salt, and paint, I compose the layers of animation to create a cohesive image of the fragmented body.

The video begins with disembodied hands, filled with salt, repeatedly growing from one to the next. Before exiting the frame, each hand dissolves from view. The repetition of growth and dissolving ends with a single hand reaching forward. This composition of hands is derived from personal concerns with the emotional legacy of trauma and the seeking of a way to break the cycle of abuse in the future.

From a young age, my identity was heavily influenced by my religious upbringing. I allowed fundamentalism to shape me to an extent of shutting out my own desires. I lived for only what “God” asked of me. The extreme editing of self became a natural part of my life, and it remains a component of who I am today. This work is not a denunciation of Christianity, but an exploration of an abuse of power.  

I utilize a variety of religious texts that my father weaponized as a tool for dominance within my family. Matthew 5:13 states, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

This verse suggests the high value of salt in biblical times. Salt was valued not only for its ability to preserve our food and as a necessity for our personal health, but it is the root of the word ‘salary,’ it was traded as a currency like gold or silver. In reference to the previously stated scripture, salt tainted with other minerals reduces the flavor, the effectiveness, and the value of it. Symbolically, these minerals are the opposing influences in one’s life, reducing one’s “saltiness,” purity, or value in the eyes of God. This repeated proclamation by my father became an internalized fear of the people and sources influencing my life. I attempted to fill my life with purely what I believed as good.

This body of work is heavily rooted within my fundamentalist experience and explores the evolution of identity within adversity. This work seeks to become a place to contemplate the identification of self within the context of the past as it informs the present.