The installation and performance ‘The Roach,’ was the first piece produced as part of The Unfamiliar, and which sparked the photographic series Roaches and Flowers: War in the Home.
Using real flowers that were delivered to my studio at The Vermont Studio Centre, I created a large insect from the petals that I pinned painstakingly to the wall.
The insect was then photographed in different stages of decay - every day until it completely died.
Landscapes of pins and petals were also made from this installation.
Attached to the flowers was a paper note from the flower shop stating: How to care for your arrangement, which really struck me. The flowers themselves were an intrusion, a bribe that many times before had been rejected and which had followed me outside the confines of
These beautiful arrangements evoked an intense sense of terror bridging on paranoia, as memory and history refused to let me enjoy their presented offerings of peace. It was like receiving a bouquet of roaches. It was then I began to realize that unfamiliarity in a familiar space or through familiar means is like surviving a war. Nostalgia and new-found freedom cannot resolve the discomfort that remains.
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