Cat Mac Simmons – Source

Description

Artist Statement

Some of my most painful memories have become my most valued treasures. This shift in perspective shapes a conceptual practice rooted in healing and transformation. I begin with copies of my own childhood portraits, tearing the emulsion from each print. What remains is a fragile trace of the past, which I delicately place upon a recently created self-portrait. Through material manipulation and digital compositing, I join these fragments with new photographs, creating images that embody a sacred union of past and present. Each is a spiritual, dreamlike, celestial scene in which my younger self, abstracted into texture and form, becomes an ornament within my story. By reimagining these memories, I honor the past and offer gratitude for the role it played in shaping the resilient woman I am and continue to become. This work is a daily reminder of the power I hold over
my own story, and an invitation for viewers to consider how they, too, might reclaim strength and agency from their pasts.