2016-2020

Fiber & Installation

Barabbas’ Garden

2018
Multimedia Installation
Embroidered tapestry, pastel, acrylic, oil on canvas, wire, printed image, epoxy resin.
7' x 30'

“Barabbas' Garden” is a large-scale, multi-layered tapestry piece that involves audio interviews as a "soundtrack". Using ecological/botanical metaphor for human growth in a social environment, the project seeks to question how personal growth occurs while a person is affected by decisions, circumstances, and the intersection between self and others. The Gumbo Limbo tree sheds its flaky bark in order to prevent colonization by parasitic insects. The Cecropia tree is the "pioneer species", venturing into eroded or burned lands to provide shade, restore the soil and initiate regrowth. Orangutan families rarely sleep in the same nest twice, and adult males lead solitary lives once leaving their mothers as adolescents. Similarly, humans take up certain roles dependent on social and environmental movements in each generation. Audio that includes fragments of the artist's voicemail recordings from the past decade and individual interviews can be heard from behind the layers of the tapestry. Through the combination of mediums in this installation (free-stitch embroidery, painting, collage, poetry text, audio, etc), viewers are entered into the confusion, polarity, and intensity of desire present in the act of repeatedly "being" the identity that we have of ourselves, and of experiencing others' identities.