The Inherited Trauma project (2021-2023) consists of, among others, a work entitled The DNA. It is inspired by Louise Bourgeois and one of her late projects called 'A I'infini' (2008 - 2009). Her project consists of sixteen large pencil and paint drawings. Translated as ‘into infinity’, or ‘ad infinitum’, its images are at times ethereal and dream-like, but are tied entirely to the world of the body, the cycles and experience of reproduction, to the ebb and flow of time and the confrontation of death. 

 

The images of the etched lines that lie underneath each drawing have been read as the fibres that construct a single thread. Their contours might also suggest a double helix, the building block of DNA and of life itself. Both readings of this simple outline reflect my enduring fascination with endlessly twisting, spiral forms whose metaphorical potential I put to frequent and compelling use. My drawings in pencil and red paint expand and reconfigure the printed lines which recede against a dance of knots and spirals, blood-filled arteries and veins, umbilical cords, meandering rivers, threads and tubes, notations and indistinct texts, floating figures and bulbous, anatomical shapes. The DNA represents the passage of time, how life is continuous thread and a path to be navigated; there are many routes and one may get lost along the way. The work is about self-discovery and knowledge of the self, and it also deals with the inevitability of death.  

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Sold at the Inspirational Women exhibition at the God's House Tower in Southampton March 2023