BLOODLINE no.1 & no.2

The BLOODLINE series builds on my exploration of seeking to know my grandmothers. Both died around the time of my birth and earlier work (Blood Memory, 2018) helped me to see that they live in me, despite the fact that I never knew their life force.

The science of epigenetics shows how lived experience is applied “on top” of our genes, and even without changing the core genome, our experience impacts the way in which our traits are expressed. The mythical notions of ancestral memory beg us to recognize that every person in our blood line, who has come before us, is part of us now. Lifetimes of experience course through our veins and maternal connections are especially strong, considering that a grandmother carries her grand-daughter in her womb, inside the growing body of her daughter/mother. If pattern behaviors develop generationally, and grandchildren do not have to experience a trauma to inherit trigger-responses to that trauma, how have my ancestors experiences affected me and how I respond to the world? These intuitive questions have led me on a journey to try to bridge myself to my female elders, and to help soothe and articulate the flood of emotions that find me when I tap into my own body wisdom.

The undulating copper conduit symbolizes the bloodline, a simplified single channel of lineage. The hanging coils suggest spiraling DNA or umbilical cords of experience and information that leaves and returns back to the main conduit. The pure expression of these first pieces in the collection feature only electrical wire as the coil – suggesting a more complex system of energy and currents that inform our blood and our inherited memory. Epigenetics suggest that our lived experiences can modify the expression of our genes without changing the genetic code itself.

The undulating copper conduit symbolizes the bloodline, a simplified single channel of lineage. The hanging coils suggest spiraling DNA or umbilical cords of experience and information that leaves and returns back to the main conduit. The pure expression of these first pieces in the collection feature only electrical wire as the coil – suggesting a more complex system of energy and currents that inform our blood and our inherited memory. Epigenetics suggest that our lived experiences can modify the expression of our genes without changing the genetic code itself. The neutral colors emote differently from the bright colors. Additional iterative pieces in the series will expand to include more diverse physical expressions beyond the electrical wire.