A Thousand Cuts
2026
This strange new world that has been forced upon us without our consent delivers “death by a thousand cuts” made fresh daily. At this point in history, after constant wars, ongoing genocides, the industrialized destruction of our home on Earth and disconnection from ourselves as part of nature, how do we get through this? How do we as artists go on creating beauty, meaning or creating anything at all in a time of abject destruction?
Every day we are bombarded by more information than our minds can process, more images than our eyes can see and more pain than our hearts can hold. “Big T “ traumas- major events like wars, violence, abuse or the death of loved ones are life-altering. “Small t” traumas are seen as less impactful yet can still leave lasting marks on the individual; there is no hierarchy to incoming wounds registered by the nervous system. No matter the severity of the event, trauma occurs when there are incomplete self protection responses in the body after moments of fight, flight and freeze. These traumatic moments may once have seemed rare in daily life, but are now normalized as constant occurrences. Ugliness in the comment section? That’s fight. Reading the Epstein files or Motherless.com and feeling like need running away from a place you once thought safe? That’s flight. Overwhelmed by violent images you saw on your phone and can’t concentrate at work? That’s freeze.
The human nervous system is still the same relatively simple mechanism our primitive ancestors used to survive being chased by predators. We cannot truly distinguish between real physical threats and seeing violence online. Given the hyper-speed influx of data into our consciousness, there simply is not time or capacity to process what we take in at a human pace. These unfinished energies can become stuck in our bodies, resulting in physical and emotional symptoms that we may not recognize as trauma until disease or disorder has set in.
Art is one of the ways I release what is not mine to carry. Drawing a pattern of letters on top of my prints, I then incise them with a knife, piercing through the surface tension to release the traumas large and small. Again, that's how the light gets in.
