This sentiment reflects the fact that trauma lives on in the body, rather than solely in the archive. My work relates to the concept of postmemory as theorized by Marianne Hirsch. Postmemory describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before. 

It explains how my body “remembers” experiences I only had through the stories, images, and behaviors of my family members. This work fuses my therapeutic self-portraiture practice with the photo-therapy with which I engage my family. The series highlights my grandparents and myself, as characters with intertwined trajectories despite the physical distance between us for much of our lives. 
I have attached this work to the German preposition “zu”. Zu indicates where someone or something is headed and occurs both in Zufall, chance, and in Zukunft, future. As my family’s formation was an occurrence of zufall, so is my zukunft and who becomes a part of my family now is completely up to chance. My work comes from a very personal place, yet it resonates with anyone who has ever experienced the sensation of being a cuckoo's egg - feeling out of place in their own home, detached from their family, or grappling with their cultural identity. With my camera, I will continue to search for the source of this feeling within myself.