Tracing Touch
2023
Cotton

Tracing Touch navigates the unseen in-betweens of ancestry and the here and there of the people and their lives who framed my existence. Tracing Touch is exploring the symbiotic relationship between ancestors that I haven’t met and there is this overlap. They are ever present in my life. Remnants of their labour, possessions, and conversations are passed through the generations. The portrait of this moment of sustained connection to the people who came before me,  although unseen, is felt and the act of touching and cutting the portrait mimics and reveals the unseen impression they have left in my life. It is the displacement and adaptation of that impression which comes through without being physically present. The armour seeping through the layers fabric is a marker of the imprint that is made. The imagery references the labour, stories, objects that have been offered to sustain tradition and there is an expansion of heritage beyond the physical constraints of land and time. 

Cut and take a piece to reveal and see the unseen ancestral touch.