Milky

Milky is a series of embroidered and beaded self-portraits where I consider my relationship to nature and sense of self. The work explores birth, the prospect of motherhood, and the expectations I place upon myself and my body.
In individual works in the project, I add beads and thread to photographic prints, representing the fantasies and expectations I’ve internalized as a woman. The piece, Breast milk, exaggerates through illustrative beading what I imagine the experience of making breast milk would be like. In Hydrangeas, I lay in the lawn naked from the waist down, displaying bold sexuality, while simultaneously revisiting the carelessness of my childhood spent playing amongst the flowers in my parent’s yard. The piece, Sea, shows me laying in the fetal position in the ocean. The three-dimensionality of the embroidery thread worked into the photographed seaweed creates the illusion that my body is being engulfed by the ocean. Inspired by Ana Mendita’s earth-body works, I too seek a way to “return to the maternal source.”