A Dreamlike story…

In my first undergraduate year, I pieced together a collage not only using newspapers, flyers, pamphlets, and magazines found along my walks; but also bottle caps, concert tickets, personal cards and ribbons from events and social gatherings with my peers and loved ones. 

According to Simmons & Daley (2013), collage is an art form that involves making connections and considering relationships, bringing together parts to construct a new whole; and it is characterized by transformation of original texts, images, symbols and meaning. Rather than a single art piece completed in one or a few sittings, this collage was created over a period of eight months through countless sessions, where materials were selected, cut up, shaped, and then placed on my wall with tape. The result was a collage that was ‘living’, continuously expanding, growing, and changing form, not only in size but also in meaning, up until the very last day of my stay. 

My life feels like a poetic collage sometimes, weaving aesthetic dimensions of everything dreamy, including justice and peace, to create new meanings of what ‘could possibly be’. In a deep sense, collage (and poetry) are self-intimate encounters with Self, safe and brave places for me to deconstruct and (re)construct myself; they are the in-between spaces and places, where I can fall apart and put myself back together again.

I started creating digital collages in 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic. Exploring a new way to do collage helped me make sense of a tumultuous world by providing me a safe and brave space, again, to radically (re)imagine new ones for us to dream and live in.

Artists often struggle to describe their own work, including their inspirations, as there are often so many to trace. Reflectively, my work continues to be inspired by artists, activists, and scholars who have instilled in me a relentless devotion to not only dream, but to re-imagine and create new worlds full of colour and magic. Simultaneously through this process, I also find pieces of myself, my friends, and fellow passer go-ers along the way. Collage, for me, is not just about the destination. It’s about the journey as well, if not so much more so.

My art has been described as ‘ethereal’, ‘magical’, and even ‘divine’, but above all else, my work has been characterized as ‘dreamy’ lending itself to the name of my business and brand ‘Dreamlike’.