In my practice, I explore memory, secrecy, and transgenerational trauma through the reappropriation of family photographs. Returning to images from my childhood, I revisit moments captured before I understood the forces already shaping me. Through painting and manual print transfer, I reclaim these archives, allowing memory, identity, and authorship to shift.

Where I once used colour and layered mixed media to intervene in fading memories, I now work primarily in black ink through manual transfer. What I considered a delicate process revealed itself as both controlled and uncontrollable — an act of destruction. The image survives through rupture. In that rupture, I find liberation.

There is often an elephant in the room — something visible yet unspoken. In one work, it becomes a giraffe: a child dressed as a bride stands beside it, waiting. Through this image, I question how my understanding of love and relationships was shaped by romantic fantasy, inherited expectations, and the digital environment in which I grew up.

Growing up alongside the internet created the illusion that digital literacy meant safety. It did not. Early exposure to hyper-sexualised imagery and online dynamics shaped my understanding of love and validation before I had the language to question them. I learned to occupy the gaze before I understood its weight.

By reworking these photographs, I reclaim authorship over how these experiences live in the present. The work becomes an act of confrontation and release — refusing to let the past remain invisible or unconsciously dictate the present.