A behind the scene’s look at the artist statement for my final thesis project!
TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault
As a young girl, I was drawn to fantastical stories. I read everything from mythology to science fiction to folklore to fantasy. Reading those stories was my escape from everyday life and the pressures that came with being a young woman in today’s world.
In every moment of free time I had, I read. I devoured every single young adult dystopian novel, imagining myself as the young heroine who would save the world, win the heart of the guy and be just an overall badass. I started braiding my hair like Katniss Everdeen, wearing leather jackets, and creating fantasies of my own, using the people in my life as my characters. My obsession with fantasy novels as a teenager was a natural development from my love for princess movies as a child. I’d run around the house in a yellow dress like Belle from Beauty and the Beast and admire my red hair, like The Little Mermaid, Ariel’s. I’d practice the dances from The Nutcracker and watch on repeat Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus. It was not till recently, that film came flooding back into my memories of the first time I ever saw a Pegasus, a magical, flying horse. I never imagined, after all these years, that my childhood and teenage obsessions would find me as an adult who was overcoming tragedy.
Almost three years ago, I was sexually assaulted. I did not know who I could trust or even wrap my head around what had happened to me. So, I took a page from my teenage self and read. I turned to whatever fiction novels I had in my apartment and the first one I grabbed was The Odyssey. That specific copy already meant a lot to me, having been translated by Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate and publish her own version of Homer’s epic. I studied Latin for seven years, from the ages of 11 to 18 years old. During the same time, I was compulsively reading every YA fantasy novel I could get my hands on.
I imagine my journey with Latin and my love of mythology as one thread. The other thread is my passion for YA fantasy novels. The two threads I assumed existed parallel to one another, but it was not until recently that I could finally see they were actually entangled. Over the years, these two individual threads became one. And following my assault, that thread grew knotted.
I found myself reading The Odyssey repeatedly, collecting multiple translations of Euripides, Ovid, and Sophocles. I read The Iliad and contemporary, reimagined versions of myths from Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Circe to everything in between. I could not be stopped. At the same time as I was devouring Greek and Roman mythology, I read Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers. I watched all the Disney movies and their live-action counterparts. I even created my own fan casting for the entire Greek pantheon and a live-action version of Disney’s Hercules.
This knot I created would not stop growing. I did not want to deal with my assault, so I completely escaped into these false realities. I did not want to be a victim of assault or even a survivor, so I became a princess, a demi-god, or even the monsters in those stories because none of them were real.
This insane method of coping then translated itself into my artistic practice. For my BFA Photography thesis project, I created a book of poetry and photographs. The words and images were woven together to tell the story of my assault. But, the way it was done as if I was a mythological woman. I dressed myself in gold and photographed myself in soft lighting and created a book that feels unearthly. The book was a myth. I became a myth because I did not want to believe what had happened to me.
I fully transformed my trauma into art. I believed in my heart that what I went through was not real.
But it was.
And that is where this project comes in. After lots of therapy and looking back on my BFA project, I can see how at the time I was doing what I thought was healthy for me. In the end, it was not. Using mythology and fairytales was a crutch. In this collection, I do my best to break away from myth and fairytale.
It has become natural for me to fall back on them, to write as if I am a princess locked away in a castle or a face worthy of launching a thousand ships. So, over the course of this collection of work, I attempt to break away. To say goodbye to that crutch and to accept my assault as reality. That what I went through was real and painful. It does not have to be dressed up or painted beautifully, in order for me to talk about it.
The collection of work I titled Flying Horses. A reference of course to Pegasus, but to more specifically their origin story. Pegasus’s mother was Medusa. Before Medusa was as the world thinks of her, she was a beautiful girl who worked in the Temple of Athena. Her looks drew the attention of Poseidon, who raped her in the temple. Much to Athena’s dismay, she punished Medusa and turned her into a gorgon. Following that, Perseus slew Medusa. After he sliced her head off, Pegasus came forth. Some classicists argue, that Poseidon was Pegasus’s father. I believe otherwise. Pegasus was of Medusa’s creation. After all her pain and trauma, she still found the strength to give birth to something that can fly.
This collection is my flying horse. Like Medusa, I am a survivor of rape.
In the wake of all that I’ve been through, each of these essays is my attempt to create something beautiful. But to also challenge the idea of beauty and making art about trauma. This is why each essay has its own unique form that speaks to mythology and fairytale. The first piece, Crashing of the Tides, was written like a Greek tragedy. It’s the essay that I find myself relying on myth and fairytale, having discovered the Greek muse, Calliope. Upon her arrival, I transition into Happily Never After, a fairytale based on my life experiences. But, I remind the reader before Chapter One, that what they are about to encounter is not real. And at the end of the fairytale section, the reader encounters the truth. The truth section is a stream of consciousness reflection of the impact fairytales had on my life. I then shift to Goddess of Grief, which is my own take on a Greek epic. I invoke Calliope at the start of the epic, overloading the piece was mythological references. But by the end, I give Calliope the choice to stop singing.
I then move to my final piece, illis qui mutati (those who have shifted). In this essay I have a lot of fun playing with form, shifting the words on the page to invoke the shifts I have gone through in real life. But I have not fully escaped mythology and fairytale here, as there are hints and references throughout (the use of roman numerals, the image of gold mirrors on the wall, flickering forms). I play with time too. In the two sections, threads that are woven together are split into the past and present. In the present sections, I speak directly to myself in the second person. While in the past moments, I use the first person to talk to the reader. I really wanted this final piece to show how the mythological and fantastical elements are now blending together in a more nuanced way.
At the end of Flying Horses, the knot that was my passion for mythology, fairytales, and my trauma has slowly come undone. Instead, it exists as a thread that I have full authority and control over. A thread like the one Philomela used to weave her tale of trauma in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Like her, this collection is a weaving of trauma. And as much as it is about the words on the page, the power of metaphor, and my love for myth and fairytales, I want readers to take away that at its core, this is a story of survival.
Flying Horses is about its author growing her own pair of wings and becoming the heroine of her own story.