Unqualified

This portrait of a teenage girl at the wheel of a car mirrors a grown up by sitting in the driver’s seat, yet she is only a child and is unqualified to drive. This image is a metaphor for the trauma I experienced after witnessing the unexpected death of my father.  I drove away from hospital disoriented and lost the ability to speak.  For weeks after his death I felt inexperienced, unfamiliar and unqualified to deal with the emotional turmoil and the responsibility that comes with loss.  There is a lot of disorder before any kind of re-orientation, and there seems to be no destination to the journey, just lots of isolated stepping stones towards healing. 

To seek order out of chaos and beauty out of pain, I made this work to explore the immediate responsibility I felt of stepping into his shoes and taking over the family patriarch while simultaneously becoming this vulnerable little girl.