top of page

michéla domachowske, BORN IN 2002

STATEMENT

EXHIBITIONS

AWARDS

I don’t know… I enjoy the idea of memory in art. I like using it as a form of preservation, keeping things around that may no longer be. Or manipulating how I want to remember things. Giving space for affairs to exist, and then gently allowing a flow or organization to take place. 

Reification. Crystallizing the feelings that are difficult to house outside of abstraction. It’s very procedural. It really isn’t about the outcome of it, until it is. It always begins as some sort of healing.

It’s hard to sit with our feelings. If we ignore them, they fester and destroy us. If we make them the sole reason for our existence, we fester and destroy ourselves. I guess that’s what I’m trying to avoid by using artistic practices as rituals. Self-destruction.

I guess that goes back to preservation. Self-preservation I suppose. I guess if I can preserve my emotions in a non-abstracted manner then I don’t have to bend over backward carrying them around. They exist as their own being, a being with relationships, ideas, and mannerisms. It becomes an extension of myself that I can converse with. A mirror, but one of those distorted ones. It’s different than me, but it does reflect me. An aspect of me, a distortion of me, any perspective. But it doesn’t exist without me. 

It feels like freezing a body, almost. It is living, ever-changing, never a complete work. There is more of its life to be lived, and it will still exist as its own thing tomorrow.

It’s interesting that this process tends to come in tandem with emotions that have negative connotations. Sadness, anger, anxiety, frustration…it all needs somewhere else to exist. Somewhere other than me, but somewhere I can still access it. But joy, excitement, love, humor…those things I allow? Well, yeah…they’re good. But does that make those feelings exclusive to my work? No. They still find their way into it, despite the initial emotions that drove the process to begin with. I guess that still has to do with the process. “Bad”, or uncomfortable emotions become comfortable. They don’t change necessarily, for example from sadness to happiness, but they get a whole lot easier to sit with.

 

Wow. I guess just sitting down and writing really works. But I don’t know, I feel like I’ve been dealing with this kind of catharsis for a week now.

-M.D. 10.30.2023

  • ITHACA COLLEGE POP-UP GALLERY, 2022.

  • SCHOLASTIC STUDENT ART SHOW, 2019.

  • BREWERTON LIBRARY, 2018.

  • FULTON SAVINGS BANK, 2018. 

bottom of page