This series is inspired by the spirits of the past and present.
This series is multifaceted. It is partly an exploration of identity through the fields of genetics and epigenetics, based on two DNA tests I took in 2019 and 2021, and imagery of powerful dream sequences I have had.
Briefly, epigenetics is the term used to describe gene activity by mechanisms other than through the DNA sequence, through a process known as “gene expression”.
Said another way, it is a description of how the environment you exist in, the people who you are not genetically related to, and the land you live with, can alter and directly impact the way you look and are physically, but only in a single generation.
This information and reality is different to memetic inheritance, also a very important form of heritage, that is a form of cultural inheritance passed on through the beliefs and behaviors of others, but that does not alter you physically.
In thinking more about my own heritages, Celtic, Norse, old English, North American, Caribbean, and Lebanese, this body of work has evolved and now also includes imagery of both personal and cultural human heritages that speak to us through time.
These heritages constitute old footprints, artifacts, stories, or communication by other means that are being revealed through the land record and studied by the archeological and human anthropological sciences.
In some cases these revelations come to us by the processes of climate change through glacier melts, discoveries of rock art within ancient caves, or a combination of hard work and sheer luck, that both add to and defy previously held notions of our individual, collective, and cultural ancestries.
These heritages are directly linked to how we think about ourselves.
