HIRAETH
HIRAETH(n.)- In Welsh: “A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia,the yearning, the grief for lost pieces of your past.”
Our lives, filled with benign and mundane activities, are sometimes fraught with unexpected events: tragic, traumatic and mysterious. As we constantly adjust to a new understanding of our world, the aftermath of trauma leaves an impression that steers us to a new awareness and an awakening of senses leaving us at times in a state of disorientation and confusion. In this instance we often experience a collateral beauty, unexpected abundance, and residual spiritual awareness.
This work dives into the family disease of addiction and the navigation of recovery. Using the Aran Sweater, knit with a family pattern to identify drowned sailors, the unraveling explores the impact of addiction on families. The navigation and star charts in this work are a metaphor for recovery through an emotional and environmental charting and wayfinding. How do we find our way back home in the uncharted territories of addiction and recovery?
This work is some of my most personal work, having lost my brother to this disease and through my own personal journey through 18 years of recovery. Within this realm I hope to convey the impact of the losses and the tangles of the disease along with the solutions of recovery, a connection to the environment as a tool and a promise for healing with stories of recovery
This work more broadly considered, is an exploration of the intersection of destruction and creation; a navigation of the unconscious, (at times archetypal and collective), and those uncharted waters of emotional realms.