Four years ago I started collecting and digitising my grandparents' archive of family photographs. I currently have over 1,000 photos in my collection.
Travelling through these memory archives, I started covering the objects around me with copies of the photographs, playing with them, cutting and transforming them, trying to find meaning in these stories. The project's starting point and guiding map was a series of self-portraits in wearable sculptural armour, 'armour of the past'. This work is not only a direct reference to the metaphor "family is protection", but also to what makes up me and my story, the heavy traumas, and the secrets that family history carries. These photographs depict weddings and funerals, ordinary everyday lives and traditional indigenous celebrations. Together, they weave a deep and sentimental backstory, extending the heaviness of armour past its physical sense.