Abigail Lucien (BFA 2014)

Artist Statement

My interests and ideas are a product of being raised in two places at once. With my father being from Cap Haitien, Haiti and my mother from Waterford, Pennsylvania, I have always been submerged in the waters of two very different cultures. My two contrasting homes gave me a unique understanding of self-identity and gave birth to several large questions: What exactly composes personal identity? How many teaspoons of Nature to Nurture are called for in the recipe of our beings? What role does the history of our past play in predetermining our present and future self? My work explores my ideas of self-identity as a biracial woman of color.

Growing up as a biracial and bi-cultural woman, I observed first-hand how things that are very different and unusual from each other can come together and live harmoniously, and in the same breath, how they cannot. My interest resides in the grey area between the two– in the limbo where objects, people and things loose their intended function and their purpose is redefined. I allow the methods of the printmaking process to both inform and express my ideas of cultural identity. In my work I print consecutive layers of color using a technical approach called process printing, as a way of drawing parallels with the layers of my own layered heritage. With this process I seek to replicate the experiences I have had with both people and things, while re-appropriating them to allow them to exist in a new time and space. Using personal family photographs I explore the relationship between experiencing a moment directly and the process of recollecting a moment from memory.

This project is titled: “In Full Color & Twice Removed, No.3” It echoes my memories as a child in my Grandparents house in Waterford, PA. My elder sisters, Rebekah and Hannah, are CMYK silkscreen printed and hand stitched, going about their usual activities, frozen in 1993.

“In Full Color & Twice Removed, No. 3”, silkscreen prints on polyester film, frosted Mylar, fabric, Chinese mulberry and wall, accompanied by found and altered objects, 2014