my soul’s sight

My Soul’s Sight 2023-24
Digitally sublimated print (approx. 12m), neon signage
Dimensions vary
Special thanks to Cole’s Neon Shop and CRISTAL NO.5 for their assistance and collaboration. 

My Soul’s Sight is a photographic and light installation seeking to make sense of the compounding colonial and psychological wounding taking place over the lifespan of my grandparents and across generations, into the now. Archival images from my aiga (Sāmoan: family/kin) are collaged and digitally printed on a monumental twelve metre long sheer textile, suspended in the space in the likeness of a dragon. Like crocheted squares on a quilt or colourful patches on a tivaevae (Cook Island patchwork quilt), the faded images create a digitally woven tapestry of history, each face like a star and each body a constellation. This work is a physical manifestation of a desire and yearning to understand, empathise and accept the happenings and displacement which ultimately led to my existence. 

The neon light element reading, ‘My Soul’s Sight’ is a line from a larger neon poem I began in 2023, a new medium and trade I have been learning. Creating light is a marvellous experience. When making, I focus on embodying the energy I wish the work to hold, hoping its light emits a similar message or meaning. I love working with fire as an element, an essential in the process of cleansing, transforming, destroying; for me, fire is spirit and divine, the ultimate act of renewal through rebirth. Throughout the making process, I am learning where to relinquish control to allow room for the work to shift and change naturally, oftentimes revealing new and more powerful meaning to me than intended. In this instance, the word ‘soul’s’ suffered a breakage whilst in transit to a previous exhibition interstate, damage that I mourned and thought irrepairable. However, upon receiving the damaged pieces, I was amazed to see that this was the only word of this phrase to suffer a small crack, creating a beautiful poetic rendering of the original line with the dimming of a single, crucial word. My main personal takeaway being that my sight, indeed, did not align with my soul; a realisation I felt at the time but could not describe so plainly.