ADMA 2023-2024

During the AdMa year my print-based research has become concerned with how I embody the ongoing effects of being subject to sexual assault, harassment and sexism in public. These incidents linger in my mind and the trauma experienced can be reactivated in a multitude of ways, such as when passing the location where the incident happened.

Re-mapping, 2023. Mono print (42cm by 29.7cm)

My research also encompasses how certain public spaces contain a fear based on the potential of these incidents occurring. This fear is fluid, subject to change within the same space depending on the time of day or year and previous experiences of the place. So, common across these two strands of research are my attempts to capture the mutability of places depending on what has or what is felt may occur.

Cartography of emotions, 2024. Screenprint with crayon frottage (50cm by 33cm)

In my research I identify ways in which I can use print-based outcomes, in public space, to give voice and space to these (potential) incidents and their ongoing effects. These artworks are derived from personal experiences, and the experiences of others collected through participatory print workshops such as zine making. 

I have produced many prints this year, to strive to capture these aftereffects and fears and that these emotions and feelings can linger, lay dormant and be re-activated in varying intensities.

I fell over while running and badly injured my knee within a week of arriving in Antwerp. Through mono print, etching and screen print I sought to use the images of my injury healing, getting infected and then healing again to capture the non-linear trajectory of these emotions. Using strategies of culture-jamming, I subverted pedestrian road paving and signage, re-printing it and placing it in public spaces to emphasize the fears that these places can hold. I printed zines with participants from Antwerp and researched how I could print on the body, all with the hope that I could catch how it feels.

Injury knee prints, 2023. Left-side is monoprint (20cm by 15cm) and right-side is screenprint (15cm by 10.5cm)

Photograph of screenprinted beermats (10.6cm in diameter) on cafe tables used to publicise zine making workshop. 2024

My work is necessary because it gives witness and with that the potential to ease suffering. It exacerbates the violence that I do not have the ability to respond to these incidents when they occur.

The research has the capacity to open dialogue about ways to create more sustainable communities and gender equality, as the continuation of these incidents and their aftereffects exposes a patriarchy that is still very much in existence and continues to harm.

This year’s work built on previous projects that employed a feminist methodology, specifically it avoided the asymmetric power arrangements evident in patriarchies by using participation and collaboration, it situated the research knowledge as being from those who are subjugated by using print in the outcome, as characteristics of print being a marginalised art form remain. It promoted social change and activism and avoided hierarchies of access to knowledge, by using culture jamming and distribution of free zines.