date. 2021

For years I’ve been visiting the same place almost every night in my dreams, my Mansion of the Mind. Although the dreamscape is far more than just a house, there is inevitably a house that I go to each time. I use this time in my dreamspace to feel the temperature of what’s going on with my waking life, and although the house has shifted over the years, it is always my house. I believe these dreams are a way to process the events of my life on a deeper level, especially trauma. 

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As an adoptee, trauma starts at birth with maternal separation. For 9 months you’ve been flooded with hormones and smells, bonding with your mother. Then you’re ripped away and placed in a home where you’re supposed to be a blank slate, like a doll, to fill an empty space in another family. But this leaves an empty space where you were supposed to be, and you can never make yourself fit right in the new one. 

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The Witch’s House is my attempt to convey these visions, set inside an assemblage sculpture that evolved from my own dollhouse, rescued in pieces from the attic of my childhood home. Assigned female at birth it was assumed I would share in my adoptive mother’s obsessive fascination with dolls. I collected rubbings from local gravestones and manipulated the images to cover the floors and walls, literally burying the pastel cottage of the past and transforming it into a space for my rebirth. 

 

Music by Matt Dallow @Mattdallowmusic