I Speak Because I Can By Avery Steel

An evocative representation of an autobiographical narrative about how my experience + memory of sexual assault manifests itself as a perpetual presence that is embedded on my own identity. This photographic series embodies a strange relay from trauma to memory, manufacturing both notions of distance + intimacy through an undigested thingness of a traumatic presence. I returned to the place in which the memory of the event previously happened and manifested a ghostly delineation of my experience through the creation of ambiguous, performative, and sculptural images. My hope is to represent an idea that once a traumatic event such as sexual assault takes place, there is an irreversible transition that begins where the body and the world are intertwined in a chaotic intimacy that will forevermore shape not only the perception of that place but also the perception of day-to-day life for that individual.