“Like Daughter, Like Daugther”, 2024, digital collage | artist statement

From my Genderqueer perspective, I don’t identify with womanhood, but my life experiences are inexplicably tied to it. Not a woman, but always an eldest daughter. Like Daughter, Like Daughter explores the all-too-common experience of adultification experienced by so many “daughters” who become pseudo-mothers — not only to their siblings, but also to themselves.
But I wasn’t the first daughter and I’m not the last. Generation after generation, the ritualistic exploitation of feminine labor and their bodies, as vessels, as beacons of fertility, as products, is not only normal, but expected. Babe in one arm, broom in hand, the collage’s main figure juts out a declarative hand like an accusatory Plato. Almost asking us, “Are you a daughter too?”

First Published in Fruitslice.