My collection represents my relationship (or lack thereof) with my mother. As the daughter of an addict with mental health issues, our relationship slowly degraded over time to the point that contact was more harmful than cutting her out of my life. However, the longing for a connection is always there and I find myself idealizing and dreaming of a childhood that never really existed. The distortion of childlike silhouettes and colours partnered with laser-cut crochet images of my mother’s youth is meant to give a sense of warped reality, as if you were seeing my childhood through rose-tinted lenses. The truth, however, lies in the constriction created by corsetry and the creation of a knitted textile interwoven with thousands of nails meant to depict an unhealthy repetitive behaviour practiced by my mother in which she would pull on her fingernails and my own. It is a surrealistic portrayal of my childhood that reveals the perspective I am confronted with when remembering my youth.
