me, unfolded
I am an artist, currently a PhD candidate at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), School of Art. My practice is informed by my Neuroqueer lived experience and through the intersecting frameworks of posthumanism, queer theory and xenofeminism.
I received average grades in honours (I wish I had had the confidence to contend these grades). I applied for two PhD programs that were rejected. After my masters (where I was able to improve my grades and was in a kind, inclusive accessible educational context) I was accepted into a PhD program (3rd time lucky!).
I studied gender performativity and fashion semiotics during my honours. I researched technologically mediated modes of divergent/queer care (neuroqueer cyborgs) during my masters.
My initial PhD proposal was to continue to interrogate technologically mediated, neuroqueer modes of care (neuroqueer cyborgs). Accidentally, this manifestary textual assemblage, extending neuroqueer cyborgian modes of care into the maternal, is forming the foundations of my creative practice and PhD research.
I live in Adelaide, South Australia, with my partner, youngest-young-adult offspring and three cats. We regularly travel to Melbourne for our studies, where RMIT is located.
Adelaide can be a conservative, small place (I forever feel alien here).
I am from colonial-settler ancestry living on the unceded lands of the Kaurna peoples. I have lived here my whole life. My ancestors were trades people that came on the very first ship that settled the colony in so-called-Adelaide † (this is not a note of pride, just one of information).
Throughout school I was bullied for being weird and odd, having few friends.
I am a survivor of childhood sexual and domestic violence, at the hands of our step-father. Much of that violence was perpetuated through the lens of christianity † , living in a very strict christian household.
My grandmother and mother taught us sewing, arts and crafts, often while we watched movies – these times were safe islands from the rest of life.
As teenagers, myself and my younger sister ran away from home (at 14 and 12), eventually coming to live with our Grandmother.
Having been raised as a christian herself, our grandmother continued to raise us with christian values, taking us to a fundamentalist, Pentecostal church[9].
This ‘church’ was a very restrictive cult † dressed up in fun camps and musicals. This cult enforced rigid expressions of gender and required perfect heteronormative performance. I was married at 18 an (almost) virgin bride. We swiftly had two children.
I spent much of the first 10 years of my adult life desperately trying to perform mother and woman like I was supposed to (and failing). Within my marriage I was subjected to emotional toxicity and emotional abuse. I spent chunks of this time suicidal and self-harming. Once separated/divorced I experienced increased levels of emotional and economic abuse at the hands of my former husband.
Eventually, I left the cult and subsequently lost/left most of the networks I had built there.
It is frowned upon to talk to the ‘fallen’ † .
During the next phase of life I experienced various levels of poverty and trauma.
I was forced to give up the children for half of their time † . For the next 10 or so years the children were used as tools of continued abuse and bargaining chips, continuing cycles of trauma on them.
Space from marriage, church and children become a generative space for creation and reclamation. I am very fucking thankful for the space that circumstance afforded me (I never knew to fight for this space, I never knew I could or that it was there to claim).
Having been a stay-at-home mother, I had no qualifications or real working experience, nor any skills at building networks outside of a church environment. I continued to experience challenges with work and feeling extremely, socially isolated. I experience debilitating C-PTSD symptoms and have experienced cycles of depression and social anxiety.
I have been safely held throughout my life by my own making and creativity, imagining worlds I would allow myself to be lost and safe within. With a hope for joy and survival, I went to art school to give space to this. And there, at the age of 27(!!!) I was exposed to feminism for the first time!! I learnt about racism, white privilege and for the first time in my life, the violence this land and its people experienced at the hands of my ancestors.
I learnt about queer theory and read the words of Judith Butler, learning about gender performativity. And again, I was held.
I had space to resist and deconstruct my early instruction, to mourn, and to create and to play.
I joyfully and obsessively created and continued to read philosophy and watch ‘worldly’ † movies and listen to the ‘devils’[14] music – expanding my world.
In 2014 I met my dearest B. A creative, self-proclaimed freak, artist and photographer who has made space for me to feel safe and expand. Ze is my greatest creative collaborator and love.
I did my best to (m)other my children fast becoming teenagers. We continued to experience abuse, significantly, economic abuse from their father. My eldest offspring came to live with us full time first, and then eventually my youngest. This was a line in the sand (I thought). I felt we could now be free.
Experiencing ongoing workplace challenges, persistent social isolation (including experiencing bullying and exclusion at work, at uni and in the local arts community) and sensory issues, I was diagnosed as Autistic. My youngest offspring was also diagnosed as Autistic and my eldest diagnosed as multiply neurodivergent.
This knowledge led to another level of being held by my philosophical, neuroqueer (M)others † . I am so thankful for this knowledge.
Self-knowledge, academic research, creativity, and love created a safe cloud for us to rest within …
In 2019, unexpectedly, we were afforded the ability and privilege to buy a home together. For the first time in our adult life we had a safe, secure place to live.
In 2023, the first year of my PhD, our small family of 4 experienced one of the worst times in our life. The events of this time destroyed the fabric of the life we had fought so hard to create. The details of this time are not alone my story to tell (will never be told), but it ended (it is still not ended) with my eldest offspring going to stay with their paternal grandparents and eventually moving back in with their father (at 21).
As mother, and as I was constantly reminded, I had failed. I had failed to protect us and failed to stop the cycles of trauma. Again, as mother, I was asked to give all of myself to fix, to save, to alone bear the weight, when I had nothing left to give. And again, I failed.
I sat in front of my computer screen attempting to write my required literature review and instead, for hours, I just wrote and wrote (a stream of consciousness) …
and, the first iteration of this manifesto was born.