Bondage/Bandage

2023-ongoing

Bondage/Bandage is a series of collage installations centered on exploring childhood memory and the role of Christian spirituality in redeeming memories. The works look at remembering as a means to redemption, specifically through spiritual practices of prayer, thanksgiving, and mindfulness. My source was my own memory and my research was re-searching these recesses. “Bondage” refers to the parts of my mind, heart, psyche, and soul that I have discovered are in need of healing; “Bandage” is in connection with my response to these findings, an attempt to discover what can heal those places. I believe our posture toward memory can either hold us captive, or free us. It can either bind us up or, if applied well, be a balm for our wounds. In bearing oneself, in opening up the sore places, as a wound is given air - so does remembering act as a step toward restoration.

Visually, I attempt in these works to blur the boundaries of body and soul, past, present, and future. Colorful, illustrative imagery is paired with soft tones and somber figures to create semi-surreal, ethereal compositions in discussion with the immaterial experiences of memory and spirituality. In beholding both the inward life as colored by memory and spiritual experience, and the consequential outward effects, I dwell in the uncomfortable, in-between place where healing often occurs. And what I have witnessed, is Christ making me new.

“art making…is a discipline of awareness, prayer, and praise. Imagination gives us wings to create, but it is through Christ’s tears and the invitation to the feast of God that we can be partakers of the New Creation.” - Makoto Fujimura, from “Art and Faith: A Theology of Making”, pg 3

And in the great aching, lonely places,

The grievous forms and hateful spaces,

Even there - I find You.

My darkness is not dark to You -

My night is as light to You

excerpt from “Dawn and the Sea,” by Abi Rainey (a reflection on Psalm 139:1-12)