Artist Statement

   My practice explores the tension between childhood innocence, memory, and the loss of agency. Using archival childhood photographs as a point of departure, I create a dialogue between my younger self and my adult perspective, examining the lasting developmental, emotional, and social impact of childhood trauma. Through the manipulation and reconstruction of these images, I attempt to reclaim a sense of agency lost during a formative stage of my life.

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      Central to this work is the substitution of my own likeness with childhood stuffed animals, which function as proxies for both comfort and burden. These objects, traditionally associated with innocence, care, and security, become vessels onto which trauma is projected. By replacing my portrait with these figures, I question how experiences of neglect and emotional longing shape identity: what if I had been treated with the same tenderness afforded to these cherished objects? In this act of replacement, the familiar symbolism of the stuffed animal is destabilized, transformed from an emblem of innocence into a site of emotional complexity and loss.

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    Through the materiality of paint, I construct imaginative spaces in which the figure can retreat—spaces untethered from the specificity of traumatic memory and reflective of the safety and freedom I longed for as a child. Drawing inspiration from the colours, shapes, and visual language of childlike imagery, my work becomes both an excavation of memory and an attempt to reconnect with a sense of innocence that feels fractured, absent, or stolen.