Deborah
Jack

2017 W/SW Juried Exhibition Application Portfolio

My interest is in the multiple stories in History and the way they are can be translated and visualized in the present. About the subtle differences in the remembrance, telling and re-telling.
As an artist, I engage a variety of visual strategies for mining sites of cultural memory that pertain to the Black Atlantic and the Caribbean region. I try to visualize the resonance of traumatic historical events, like the Middle Passage, and their effect on Nature.
The work explores the relationship of the natural world to memory, personal and cultural. How does nature create memorials for the small and large histories that occurred? How does is heal itself from the trauma of bodies lost at sea? The sea, the shore, the land and the flora all play a part in the visual allegories I create. They serve as the inspiration for the development of my work. I am intrigued by concept of re-memory, memory as a trigger and as a means for exploring the dismembering of the histories, cultures, traditions, families, and personal memories. The work seeks to articulate historical and cultural injury in a manner that seduces the eye with scenic aspects of landscape and obscures the potential for the betrayal that can come from closer examination of these seemingly innocent and untouched places and/or bodies.
My work examines the intersections of history, memory, and Nature. It seeks to create a counter narrative to the historical archive with my own constructed histories. Central has been the notion of Nature creating seasonal memorials to exorcise traumatic histories. It is an exploration of the resonance that inhabits places, and the traces of traumatic historical events can embed themselves in the sea, land, and the body. I believe that these sites of trauma are also sites of healing.