ANOMIA

“anomia” is from Greek and is formed from two Latin roots: “a-” (without) and “nomen” (name); it is defined as the persistent inability to find the correct word (literally, “without names” )

This collection of small painted portraits of family members is a protest against the absence of recorded female narratives and histories in my family tree. I used old family photographs as reference to create distorted portraits in a variety of media, mostly oil painted on glossy photo paper, Fabriano, or oil on printed photographs. In some of the group portraits the female faces are nearly wiped (or blanked) out, placing the focus on the absence of their narratives in public archives and private memory.