The Birdsong is Deafening 2020
The Birdsong is Deafening is an
ongoing body of work that contemplates the endlessly shifting landscape between
memory, loss and place. It reflects upon the relationship I have to my hometown
of Cairns and the in-between spaces of growing up with a multicultural
identity. On my mother’s side there is the deep quiet of Scandinavia and on my
fathers the fragments of old Yugoslavia.
In the process of creating, I
gathered around me the residue of memory. I consulted old creek beds I once dug
holes in, bike paths I frequented, musty cane fields burning the same fires and
the well-worn family albums asleep in an old fridge. I used the camera to trace
over these thoughts on identity and what began as a solitary meditation slowly
extended into a gentle collaboration with the land and those closest to me.
I
found solace in narrating a fragment of my own story with the thought that I
might entangle others in its roots. And although you may not feel exactly the
same poetic sentiments I have tried to steep these images in – I invite you to
recall your own longings and to create dialogue between worlds that are both
real and imagined, familiar and unfamiliar, here and there.