my mother told me not to tell fibs
2023I've kept a diary from the age of 5. I was seemingly born with a
propensity for privacy: a premature self-awareness that has
directed a life-long practice of calculated revealing and
concealing.
Consequently, my mother and I have a peculiar (albeit loving)
relationship. It is best described as closeness at a distance. I know
her like the back of my hand, but she sees me through frosted
glass and reads me like an essay with paragraphs scribbled out.
In my mother told me not to tell fibs, I invited an opportunity of complete transparency through a contractual agreement between myself and my mother. Under the formally specified circumstances, I committed to truthfully answering any yes or no questions she had within a designated room.
Ultimately, I violated my own contract, which I had never done before in my artistic practice. The transgression occurred in the form of a singular lie, but this lie is indicative of far more than the truth it concealed. It paints a portrait of not only myself, but familial relations and the complexity of kinship.
In my mother told me not to tell fibs, I invited an opportunity of complete transparency through a contractual agreement between myself and my mother. Under the formally specified circumstances, I committed to truthfully answering any yes or no questions she had within a designated room.
Ultimately, I violated my own contract, which I had never done before in my artistic practice. The transgression occurred in the form of a singular lie, but this lie is indicative of far more than the truth it concealed. It paints a portrait of not only myself, but familial relations and the complexity of kinship.