mk
mk is an artist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2017, they received their BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and are currently attending the University of New Mexico for their MFA in Photography. They are originally from a small rural town by the name of Sulligent, Alabama, and this place has become a driving force for the mass majority of their work.
Using found items, stories, and the longing to be back in this small town. mk investigates coping mechanisms through the function of photographic memory within the last remaining archives in their immediate family. They work in a variety of mediums ranging from photography, printmaking and sculpture in order to pursue and question their upbringing, identity, family, and the terms of loss and memory. They have shown at institutions such as the Blaffer Art Museum, The National Hispanic Cultural Center and SITE Santa Fe.
You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone
At what age does the death of your family become normal? Expected? Easier? I remember attending my first funeral at the age of 4. It was an incongruous experience. I didn’t understand why we were there, or who we were talking about, but I did know we were talking about whatever was in this big iridescent ivory box. I remember not being able to confront it. I watched others walk up to the box, embracing it, placing their hands inside, and then walking away, holding a somber but blank gaze. My mother walked us up, told us to say goodbye, and then we sat as still as we could while the preacher said, “This isn’t a sad time, but a happy one. One of celebration, as she has finally gone home.” I attended many more of these celebrations, still unable to grasp their true purpose until I was in my early 20s.
I learned about death and family by carefully and secretly watching how my mother carries herself. It was always a regal stoic experience until her sisters began to pass away. We stopped visiting the place we called home due to this heartache. She refused. The soil was too rich for her, and to step on the same ground that housed so many of her loved ones held too much sadness and grief. This sadness reached a head when I became interested in my family’s photo albums. We didn’t speak about it, not the photographs, the people in them, or the constant unbalanced weight of the stories tucked in between. The family in the albums became a safe of my mother’s memories.
You’ll miss me when I’m gone installation at the Sanitary Tortilla Factory Factory in Albuquerque, NM.
To cope with my mother’s grief and my need for I work within the album. There are only 3 albums left in existence due to a house fire that happened before I was born, making the photographs within even more sacred and precious to myself and my family.
The installation of The View Inside a Casket is an attempt to blur the line between the celebrations of a funeral and what happens to a cemetery once we leave it. The photograph is one of the few images I have of my older brother who passed away just before turning 2 years old. While I never was able to meet him while he was alive I have always had this relationship with his headstone, and his burial site. Passing away before life could even be memorable had such an effect on me that I wasn’t aware of until I was much older. The idolization of this sibling versus the expectations of what I would never be able to live up to.
By printing larger-than-life reproductions, and incorporating different media such as found/stolen objects, printmaking techniques, and sculpture, I confront my identity as well as my upbringing as it transitions to my present-day life as an adult, and within the function of photographic memory. This work serves as a reminder for me to bridge the past and present attempting to complete the fragile, tenuous, and ever-changing history of my relationship with my family and our function with grief and death.