Alison Erazmus
It Is Nice To Be Held In The Kitchen, But I Rarely Cook These Days
archival Endura c-print
30 x 40 in.
NFS
I completed this project about loneliness 12 years ago. When I started seeing calls for art about the topic of self-isolation, being homebound, and touch, I re-looked at what I made. I see now how much I yearned to touch someone when I was living alone and the uncertainty I felt about resuming romantic relationships and, in general, of being independent.
For my artist statement I wrote, “My completed photographic project, Bringing to Light: Illuminations of the Unconscious stems from my experience of solitude while living alone during graduate school. In my isolation, I became fascinated with recurrent dreams and memories, specifically the narratives that included people from my past. I began taking self-portraits and, like Frida Kahlo, aimed to express emotional and psychological states through the exterior representation of my body. As the activity of the psyche became significant to my self-portraiture, I naturally gravitated towards Freudian theory. I created each image by digitally montaging several sheets of 4 x 5 film in Photoshop. I embody and perform all the roles of the people in the memory or dream. The multiple versions of me alludes to Freud’s structural theory of the psyche, which is divided into an Id, Ego, and Superego.”
© Alison Erazmus