Magical Swamp

Through the use of the Cajun myth of the Fifolet, a malicious spirit whose goal it is to lure children and travelers into the swamp and kill them, I am personifying the death of my childhood and metaphorically trying to prevent the death from happening. This series of work illustrates my experiences being a parentified child who was forced to fast forward through my childhood as a result of accidental exposure to adult situations. I am creating a world that consists of a deserted areas that leads into a swamp, where my current self and younger self are able to exist together. My younger self is unaware of the dangers that can and do exist in this world; while my current self is trying to protect her from those dangers. In the deserted regions of the world, those dangers are physical. In the swamp the dangers are more psychological. The further into the swamp Trash and Anna explore the more the threads linking Anna to the Fifolet begin to become tangled. The more tangled their interactions become the more unclear Fifolet’s roll in the loss of Anna’s childhood becomes.

Through UV reactive and glow in the dark paint, I create scenes where my unseen figures and elements can be revealed and exist with the other figures in my work. Glow in the dark paint allows to me to bend time and physically place my current self and my childhood self in the same timeline. These otherworldly scenes are not created to excuse what has happened but as a way for me to come to terms with the past.