Seeing the red thread
The conspiracy theorist holds stock in finding an explanation. It is an intimate, obsessive, paranoid search for an alternate truth. Operating on the fringe of acceptable knowledge production, conspiracy resembles a belief system in that it requires faith in highly unconventional evidence. The thing is, when one is desperate for evidence, its sources grow virtually unlimited, and patterns begin to emerge everywhere. One sees the red thread in everything. I can empathize with this mindset, and attest to its allure: conspiracy promises a redistribution of power over knowledge, and provides the necessary space to process the absurdity of senseless tragedies.

Especially senseless tragedies that can’t fit in lockets
A pile of broken lockets sits in the corner, victims of their own smallness. The keepsake a killing thing, ripping off the arms of every silver hug, its hugeness breaking hinges. Each time a locket dies, a heart is split in two! Their cavities are too small for certain sentiments (that really require entire archives be built). A murder board is a kind-of heart-shaped archive: searching for a pulse with red twine-veins, branching out from a series of document-arteries.“To hold something in one’s heart” is a kitschy way of referring to the heart’s storage capacity, as well as the inherent preciousness of containment. This is but one facet of enclosure, the other is captivity.

The cupboard about to burst
The earth can only fit so many secrets in closed fists (knobby knuckles are prone to spillage). Nature and its laws, specifically entropy, collaborate to destroy taxonomies. I find that whenever I create a system (with air holes poked in every box), things end up bursting out of their compartments. Perhaps something smooth-talking is seeping in through the holes, the viral agents of another system.

This empty bed a fossil
I find myself salivating over a fly preserved in amber like how believers accept the unknowable. A certain comfort comes from knowing the peat bog’s secret (perfectly incorrupt bodies and ancient butter embalmed in its depths). Mysteries and esoteric knowledge are kindred in their covert packaging, some things swaddled in cocoons, other things tucked away by tight-lipped pallbearers (in urns beneath the floorboards). In amassing a collection of found things, I would like to say that these hoarded parts long for wholeness, and that wholeness offers closure. I would like to say that my systems operate like esoteric grids, and that they allow each unit to evoke its own innate mysticism. Unfortunately, I appear to be coming to, or manifesting, an unsavory conclusion: the greatest mystery of all is death.

I make narrative work in the form of drawings, paintings, and objects in order to examine belonging as an emotion in its own realm, which is inspired by my experiences as an Arab-American woman and my personal lineage. My work is the history of my family, our stories, and our realities. Our life is uncanny and inexplicable, repetitive, and painful. Our life is self-aware. Our life is not living, but surviving. I come from a line of strong women—women who have departed and rebuilt due to real-world geopolitical limitations. Every generation of my family has had to immigrate, leaving some part of themselves behind; it is the ultimate tradition. I look closely at the repercussions of the past. Separation remains within us and our stories hold us back to our past selves. My heart is my greatest casualty. Because of this constant sense of disruption, both emotional and political, I have watched cultures converge and dissect one another’s ideas, habits, and norms throughout my life. I am an Arab at a distance and an American at a distance.
I am often misunderstood, and malcontent because of it. I do not belong. I often do not belong in simplistic narratives or a classroom. I must make my own realities, stories, images, and spaces. I must desire, to desire is to destroy the world I am from.
A woman’s place has traditionally been in the home, and I dissect elements of the domestic that bind, trap, and entangle us. I am an agent of destruction. The home is kafkaesque. Home comes in multiples. Home is a place I am building, with my collections, paintings, letters, drawings, and objects. I am creating a world to which I belong.

My current drawings are explorations derived from various contrasted forms such as industrialized society at odds with the natural world, rectilinear form against organic form, and contrasted materials. I explore fragmented visualities from digital platforms and physical forms rendered as mixed media drawings to demonstrate the transient nature of the modern image, and the abstract visualities that manifest from contrasting elements.

In The Dollhouse In My Mind

I make art to untangle thoughts and feelings that keep me up at night. I grab what’s at my reach, I talk, eat and sleep. I am fascinated by night/time, waste, accumulation, industry and modes of transportation, and the ways violence has shaped our engagement with or reliance on
anyday things. I am inspired by my peers who embody non-conformity and non-compliance, we spit on norms as we navigate precarity, impermanence and obscurity. I chew on and reflect on my life experience; I project onto and collect discarded objects. Using any various art materials
that I can beg, borrow, and steal to get my hands on, I draw with paint, paint with trash and sculpt audio/video to make artworks. I invite viewers to see what in my world I am attracted to. Humans live in the company of things that have lives of their own, I empathize with materials and I work to create and to violate the intimacy and the privacy of household norms. May we all drool and dream and each find peace in sleep. XOXO... Michela Rose Mountain...