http://intern-mag.com/harriet-sleigh/
For this project I wanted to explore all the little pieces that make me, me. I'd previously had a very few difficult months and so thought i'd take the oppurtunity of having fallen apart slightly for a bit of introspection. Because i'm quite a neurotic person I thought i'd look at my personality traits starting with perfectionism, the starting point for a lot of my neurosis and habits. I looked into all the different causes and effects emotionally, socially and physically. Once I had listed my most profound traits I decided to make them into symbols. For each trait I brainstormed all the memories, back stories, relationships and situations that had caused this trait to form over 21 years. 430 thumbnails later I had my complete collection of symbols. As a lot of my research had been into distorted narratives and multidimensional characterisitcs I named my symbols my fractures, the broken pieces that make the full person. Once I had these symbols I laser cut them into black and orange perspex filling out the negative spaces left in each with the other colour. The pieces work well with light in refelction of my project shedding light on myself and the balance of positive and negatives each personality trait brings with them.
"A few months ago I felt broken. I found as I tried to pick up the pieces more fell out of my hands and I reached a point where I looked back to months previous where I felt more complete and everything about me was more together and felt like that person had splintered. I could see all the little things about me and the balance that kept me together had deteriorated and all the negative aspects of my personality where taking their toll. All the causes had negative effects and worse results, people around us provide hints and clues but this detachment from a better me, meant I could see these pieces and how each one worked. A few months on I have those pieces again I can hold them in my hands and have confined them in a space. They aren’t perfect and some of them still need altering and work but the balance of the positives and negatives in me feel more restored, they push and pull but they give motion. If we take the aspects of our personality and pull them apart we can see how each effects another, there is a constant divide of good and bad and cause and effect, but its when we see them and what they do, all the little links, it’s then that we can start to manage them. Only when we are fractured can we let light in."
Experimental risographed posters I did seperately to the main body of work.
