Rumours, secrets and absent memories can affect the stories we tell about ourselves and where we come from. Conflicting narratives, faulty recollections and admonishments often bring unsettling questions to the surface. These lingering questions sometimes reveal gaps; exposing ruptured and converging narratives, causing our personal and family histories to appear as multiple realities. By examining these altered narratives, how and why they are tampered with or ignored altogether can be very revealing. Collective suppression and denial can tap into our deeper instincts, tugging at our intuition and implicit memory, leaving us to decipher and reinterpret based on our knowledge at a given time. These uncovered histories can cause agitation and conflict within ourselves and our families; their very presence casting long shadows that follow us into adulthood.
Sleeping Dogs Lie explores the darker sides of memory, the suppressed narratives and the vacuum of knowledge surrounding insidious experiences and their aftermath. Acknowledging the body’s various threat responses and subsequent protective measures invites greater understanding of complex traumatic encounters. This body of work aims to address the complexities involved in difficult and sensitive histories. By conjuring a psychological landscape, the viewer is invited to confront this sense of unease and to question subjective memory as a protective measure.
