I was told that my mother threw me away like a dog – I’ve never stopped believing that.
My sister was three when my mom left. My father joined the South African Army, and I was legally written off. Adopted. Bereft of love.
Somewhere you get lost. You find yourself in situations of instability driven by post-apartheid society, religion, and child welfare. Trying to grow up as a solid human amid the neglect. Afflicted by ancestry and heredity.
“Hond” (Afrikaans for “dog”) explores my personal journey with generational trauma. Questioning the perspective that we are a possible version of ourselves due to the human consequences of our environment, my work deals with self-identity and the disruptiveness in our humanity. There is beauty regardless of the devastation. Endings and beginnings, balance and imbalance. The “in-betweenness” that forms a collective memory.
Abuse isn’t poetic, and neither was being raised as an Afrikaner girl.
