Ecdysis

The process of dying and being reborn, psychologically and metaphorical losing and reconstituting oneself, re-creation out of and from destruction relates to a performance in and out of these bullet armour sculptures. Ecdysis is my continuous process of research in the nature of identity, the constant experimentation in life leading to an eventual discovery of the self.

The project draws from Toni Morrison’s seminal work, The Beloved, as it speaks of the symbol of the onion. With the skin of an onion, the endless peeling of its layers is precisely the whole process of the search of the identity, the core of echoing a turbulent Asian past, and evoking recent massacres – physical and metaphorical – with still very fresh wounds. This attempts to delve in the “place”, surveying for associations of odysseys, moving from an ancient place – like Cairo, a city haunted by memories, as one of the oldest civilizations in the world– with a detritus of colonial influences. Exploring to define certain memories that tie us with a “place”, memories that involve, tell and retell our stories, those stories that host solid evidence of what was or can be seen and of what is no longer there.

“built out of compulsive repetition, in which the onion, as it were, is constantly being both peeled and reconstituted; in which memories are constantly being both exhumed and buried; and in which the mind of the storyteller is both imprisoned and set free in the act of retelling.”

And so, like the return of the enduring case of exploitation, Ecdysis is “both a reconciliation and a vexation, both a healing and a wounding.” **

**Metcalf, Stephen. Why Is Beloved Beloved?, May 18, 2006. (accessed June 7, 2009)