Rana Young

Eugene, Oregon

My earliest memories are without my mother; she was physically absent for sixteen years and emotionally for much longer. This once-shameful narrative has become normalized in my life and central to my art practice. Empathy became my escape from cyclical silence; image-making is the getaway car. ‘Lie and Smile’ reveals the tension of uncertainty as I interrogate a fleeting, estranged mother-daughter relationship that ended with her death in late 2017. My curiosity, rage, grief, and compassion collide alongside the archive I have amassed and a history she concealed for more than thirty years. I confront inherited trauma while gazing at an enigmatic woman who uncannily shares my likeness.

Through photographic constellations and a directorial lens, I employ autobiography, performance, and formal experimentation to pit photography’s evidentiary promise against its deceptive nature. I record the tangible, construct prosthetic memories, and render a diaristic elegy responding to my mother’s archive, her absence, and my matrilineal inheritance. I lie and tell truths, distilling what to reveal or protect, and with whom. I keep mining and probing. I want to forgive my mother. I want to heal. These desires sustain my practice and my ongoing negotiation with her ghost.