Antithesis of a Revelation
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Dates2019 - 2025
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Author
Antithesis of a Revelation wrestles with the cyclical nature of grief and a newfound understanding of family. The work combines lived reality with internal imaginings in an attempt to cope with my parents' separation and the loss of my childhood home.
The house was ablaze, but I feared looking back. What if I too was a pillar of salt?
Antithesis of a Revelation wrestles with the cyclical nature of grief and a newfound understanding of family. A revelation is an unveiling of something unknown. Its antithesis is a conscious act of concealment—to deliberately hide or obscure information. Set against a leveled midwestern horizon, this work weaves together nearly a decade of lived reality with my own internal imaginings in an attempt to cope with my parents' separation and the loss of my childhood home.
At the end of my 20s, a plethora of long-buried familial secrets came to light. My mother was filing for divorce. I was getting married. She was selling the house. My father was moving into the outbuilding. Abruptly, but not without warning, the way I understood my family unit—my father, my mother, and myself—was completely upended. I began to look back at the events of my childhood through an entirely new lens. Could I pinpoint the exact moment when my parents' slow separation began?
Now in my 30s, I am grappling with the complexities of their relationship with each other and their individual relationships with me. For several years, my work pulled back—away from the specifics of my lived experiences and onto more universal topics. Resentment towards my father kept me from focusing on this now foreign domestic landscape. Still, I photographed. The resulting images are a collection of dissociative moments. My camera had become a form of armor. It took me outside of the present and allowed me to exist alongside him, a cartographic tool for navigating our collective guilt.
By intertwining the biblical stories of my youth with personal narratives and familial lore, Antithesis of a Revelation offers a cathartic examination of what it means to simultaneously grow together while drifting apart.
