Dim Gold

“The desire for home greatly informs my practice. I was raised by a single mother in the military. Childhood was a succession of army bases and new schools. In search of locational and generational belonging, I collected old photos, crusty books, folktales, and anything that could provide me with a larger, human narrative in which I could situate my own story. These second-hand memories became my surrogate home. My practice is a form of cultural scraping. I use discarded, ‘rewanted’ objects to honor the stories of under-recognized individuals, peoples, and cultures. Materials are the remnants of everyday life – tattered clothes, orphan socks, broken toys, kitchen utensils, candy wrappers, metal scraps, and the like. When I incorporate these castoffs into my work, I reassign them value. What was abandoned becomes precious…”

— Mandy Cano Villalobos