Ms. Heather

This work is intended to encourage an acceptance of refugees by allowing the audience to understand the refugee’s emotional journey of fleeing from their homes due to dangerous circumstances. I was inspired by Ai Weiwei and Imran Qureshi, whose works revolve around human strife and societal issues and produce deep emotional impacts in their audience, addressing issues such as heritage, culture and traditions. The fabric wrapped balls represent different cultures “trapped” in a fishing cage, itself surrounded by paintings of flowers representing freedom, so close yet out of reach.

I wanted to create an installation of my vulnerable and anxious moments and convey them to my audience. I did this by creating multiple replications of eyes and other facial features and presented it inside a box of mirrors. The reflections amplified the feelings of anxiety when it reflects the repetitions. I was influenced by Lola Dupré’s use of facial feature repetition in her work in order to deform ordinary photos into striking images with uncomfortable visuals.

This piece tells a story of my personal experiences when I was younger with a teacher who caused me distress, ‘teaching’ the old-fashioned way by punishing students with rulers. I incorporated the storytelling technique that Marjane Satrapi uses in her works, such as Persepolis and Ajdar, stories I read as a child. Instead of a book I created a scroll-like piece that fulfils the same purpose, telling a personal story using illustrations. I used acrylic red paint to draw out a vivid colour palette, which is important to Ms Heather's personality.

I wanted to convey my anxiety and allow others to feel the flow of uncomfortable emotions through the presence of the swarming cockroaches coming out of an unusual place, such as the mouth as seen in this piece. I sought to incorporate the techniques Afarin Sajedi uses to deform ordinary photos into pieces with new meanings into my work to create a feeling of discomfort with my audience. After creating two experimental pieces to convey the feelings of anxiety, I combined them together for the final piece portraying a swarm of cockroaches coming out of the figure’s mouth for maximum discomfort.