For my Visual Communication 2 class junior year, we had to pick from a list of prompts for our semester long project with examples like socially-engaged design, cultural iconography, narrative illustration, etc. I chose the Personal Exploration prompt where it was to "create a visual narrative that explores personal family heritage, cultural traditions, or personal history. This could be in the form of a graphic novel, a series of posters, an infographic design, or an animated short story."
I wanted to create a series of posters and take advantage of the Fabrication Lab at my school where I can laser cut items out of acrylic/plastic and I took this as an opportunity to create 24x36 posters which were the biggest posters I had printed at the time. The story I am telling through the posters is a timeline of the relationship between me and my mom from my birth to her death in 2022
Printed on Epson Enhanced Matte
Egg
This poster focuses on ages 0-5 of my life. I was born October 13th, 2003, almost a month early. My mom read in new mother magazines and books that if the mother doesn’t hold the child first they will not be close. I think this is where I get my weird paranoias from. This poster focuses on ages 0-5 of my life.
Larva
This poster focuses on ages 5-10 of my life. I grew up in Medford, Massachusetts with my mom and my dad in a 2-bedroom apartment on top of a bakery. The employees grew to know me and my parents, especially when I would go downstairs to get milk and bread when my mom’s back pain was too unbearable to get up and get it. My mom had surgery done on her back and this is where her addiction begins. She was warned by the doctors that if she were to take these muscle relaxers and pain killers there is a high risk of addiction, she took this risk
Pupa
These 5 years were the peak of my mom’s addiction, at least to my knowledge. With the loss of her father, my mom turned to these doctor-prescribed opioids to help with her emotions. Department of Children’s and Families visits became more often, pictures and good memories with her became less often. By the time I was 15 I had to move out of my childhood home and to my dad’s girlfriend’s house for my own safety and my own wellbeing.
Ladybug
My relationship with my mom had highs and lows but ended at a low point. My mom passed away on July 9th 2022 at the age of 48. At the time I was not speaking to her because a month prior I decided I was going to cut off ties with her for my own mental health. Addiction is a disease. The opioid-related overdose death rate in Massachusetts increased to 33.5 per 100,000 people in 2022, 2.5 percent higher than in 2021 (32.7 per 100,000) and 9.1 percent higher than the pre-pandemic peak in 2016. (mass.gov)
Posters from our exhibition + cellophane on poster
Acrylic Ladybug
