What I Thought I Left Behind

Rebecca Stenger

Degree: BFA

Area: Fibers

Thesis Statement

Using techniques such as piecing, weaving, and knitting in sculptural forms, I am assembling memory in order to explore embodiment in my work. Personal memory is the cause of individual shaping that forms human perspective and experience. In order to understand what I embody; I look inward in order to understand my individual perspective so that I can extend more successful connections with others. The fibers techniques that I utilize in my work include the assemblage of materials in order to synthesize them into a new component, as shaping the subconscious into an embodiment of personal perspective. Synthesized ideas are then expressed as three-dimensional objects as interpretations of embodiment.

What I Thought I Left Behind

I want to forget it

I want to look away

But can I?

Does that mean cancellation

            Annihilation

Or does it make it hurt worse

There’s only so much that I can escape,

            before it catches up with me

            before it becomes unstoppable

                        overwhelming,

                                    unavoidable.

Disappearance isn’t an option.

            It’s woven in exploration

            Creeping out, begging for

                        Attention.

Before long it takes over.

            It always will

            again, and again the

            cycle is recreated.

My thesis exhibition, What I Thought I Left Behind, is a soft sculpture installation documented in a video accompanied by a soundtrack. The sculptures materialize what it feels like to be engulfed with anxiety and a fear of confronting one’s anxiety. Together, the individual sculptures create an experience for viewers to be confronted with the work. This experience simulates the awkward and encompassing feeling of anxiety, while experiencing the quietness of its buildup in the mind when it is avoided.

The soundtrack consists of seven layered whispering voices reading aloud poetry that I have written in times of severe anxiousness or fear. These voices mimic how a culmination of thoughts begin to intrude my mind. The voices are broken up by deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself by bringing myself back to reality and out of the overwhelming environment that I have created in my mind, similar to the feeling created visually by the sculptural installation.