General Assembly

General Assembly is the examination of a space that exists between public and private archives. The lingering online presence of my late grandparents is the anchor for my research. My grandfather was a diplomat and my grandmother an art collector. My role in this project is tripartite: I create as artist, archivist, and curator. The body of work itself is the convergence of these three roles—a series of photographic combinations that explore the ephemera of my origins.

I search online for specific images and objects that relate to my grandparents’ lives. In doing so, I am investigating the consolidation of various modes of representations, and the impact these different forms have on the historical narratives they describe. All types of images in this project are legitimate and of equal value: my own color photograph, a black & white snapshot, a newspaper clipping, a screenshot from the web. I create visual collages of related imagery that trace photographic threads through space and time. In presenting these visual puzzles, I ask the viewer to reflect upon the parameters of the archive, and the lives of photographs as objects in a digital age.

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