Statement

I often feel as though I am drowning, caught two between worlds, never fully belonging to either. I am an outsider, an observer; I carry the blood of both, yet it has never felt like enough. I have been made to believe I am not whole, not worthy, by genes I cannot change.

For too long, I searched for myself in the eyes of others, only to meet distortion, only to inherit doubt. Beneath my skin lie wounds that do not fade. I wake with them, walk with them, sleep beside them. But pain does not define me. My worth is not bound by another's expectation, nor by the shadows of who I was told I should have been.

This work is about holding al the pieces of myself, the grief, the beauty, the contradictions. It is about facing the truth of who I am when there is nothing left to hide behind. Just me, exposed, uncertain, but still here. Some days, the current pulls hard. It would be easier to sink beneath the weight of it al. But I don't. I fight to stay above water. I am not who I once was; quiet, naive, afraid. I have changed. And while change is frightening, it is also necessary.

The fragmented figure reflects this struggle: memory, trauma, history, resisting, and reshaping into a presence that cannot be denied. Some pieces fit, others remain jagged or unfinished but together they form me.

Truth and reconciliation is not only a collective responsibility; it is deeply personal. We each carry histories and contradictions within us, and reconciliation begins by looking inward acknowledging our truths, our fractures, and our strength.

This is my reckoning. My reflection. My release.

I ma no longer trying to belong to someone else's idea of who I should be.

I am my own.