Interview by Kehan Lai

Can you talk about your image-making process? Like did you envision the scene beforehand?

This particular series emerged in early 2013 from a daily ritual of journaling. A riot of reoccurring ambivalent thoughts surrounding the idea of motherhood began to seep onto the page. I then exchanged my pen for a camera and began photographing the psychological underpinnings of my subconscious self. I begin from a place of curiosity and questioning, letting the narrative unfold. I set the stage using props that are symbolic or meaningful and unabashedly perform in an intuitive way. Sometimes I’ll use a prop in an effort to commence a photographic free write, even if it does not make it into the final picture.

In the photograph where you hold a record titled “There’s No Other Like Your Mother”, can you tell me what the gesture of hand-holding-orange-in-the-back means to you?

As a child I always imagined being a mother. Gerber baby fast asleep, tucked softly with my favorite quilt. Brownies in the Easy Bake. In my footed onesie I twirled and danced with my mom as her favorite record crooned, “There's No Other Like Your Mother.” I played at being the mother I so loved, practicing for a time when it would be my turn to spin and sing to my own little girl. When the time came to consider starting a family, these joyful childhood memories surfaced along with mixed feelings of anxiety, fear, selfishness, and hope. I would journal and look out my kitchen window at this citrus tree as the seasons changed, watching its fruit ripen then fall away and rot. I felt like it was an ideal setting for this initial photograph in the series. Fruit represents fertility, which is in my grasp, but is left unplucked.

After reading your project statement, I noticed the ability you have to cast power over words. Have you ever had a feeling that words can achieve a clarity of what photographs put elusive? And how do you deal with that relationship between words and visual images?

I appreciate that, sometimes I find it hard to put into words what I am trying to express visually. Words can often contextualize, compliment or complicate. I find it interesting how the connotative meanings in language and the photographic medium can act as markers of time but can also change their meaning over time. Within my work, oftentimes I will utilize a word or set of words that may jump out during a free write and attempt to derive visual meaning, even if it is in an abstract form.

Has your perception of the complexity of womanhood changed after you completed the project?

I have a tendency to work on more than one series simultaneously, to extrapolate new meanings that time and space affords so this series is not yet complete. Self-revelation is continuous and identity is never fixed. I gained a deeper awareness of the complex, vast experiences of womanhood throughout the years by reading bell hooks, Donna Haraway, Hito Steyerl, among other feminist theorists, as well as my time studying at CalArts.