Context is Everything

This project was linked to the romance of the fragment project, meaning to spark thought off in a parallel direction to the previous one. I had recently attended an interview for a place at university and while explaining the subject matter of my "romance of the fragment" project she asked me if i was Catholic. I found this read on me to be very shocking as it had never occurred to me before that perhaps this apologetic mannerism stemmed from my Catholic upbringing. This proceeded to be my starting point for this project, looking into the idea of Catholic guilt and the theory behind why it existed, as well as recalling past memories to do with my sense of religion and the duties it demanded.

Initially I had thought of going back to the Machines for living project and exploring one of my previous brief studies on the symbolism of the letter "x" or a cross shape, as I was interested in what I had found originally. However it occurred to my that the symbolism of the cross very much tied into Catholicism and I began to search for a way to combine the two thoughts. What first started out as an activity to get my own thoughts going became for me an important part of my work, it was several pages of my notebook taken up with associations to do with either the letter "x" or associations to do with the x or cross shape. Initially I only wanted to jot down a few thoughts across one page but I kept going and other people began to contribute their own thoughts, so it evolved into this joint thought to do with my subject. I experimented with copying them down onto one large sheet of paper but it looked forced and not as engaging as the original layout.

Whilst looking into the theory on why Catholic guilt was supposed to exist and the demographic it existed in most as well as the effects it was most likely to have on those people, I found many interesting pieces of text that I began to amass. After reading through them all I extracted the pieces of information I found most relevant or surprising and presented them all alongside images of myself from when I was younger that had a religious air to them, whether literally being from my holy communion, or to do with the symbolism of a mother holding their child.

When presenting all my work I lay it all out on a table hoping for it to look engaging and encouraging for the viewer to interact and explore it than it perhaps it seemed. I was happy with the contents though as I knew I had invested a lot of time and effort into gathering it all and was happy with what I had found and shared.