I AM LOVE

Growing up uncomfortable and ashamed of my sexuality, love became a source of negativity and self-loathing in my life. These negative connotations rewired my relationship with love – whenever I felt love, I simultaneously felt disgust and shame.

This video work explores the present-day relationship I have with love. Instead of trying to suppress the love I feel, I embrace it. Trying to stop myself feeling love is pointless; as the video states ‘trying to stop me is like trying to stop the tide from coming in’. I have tried to change but I cannot – therefore I must accept that love is a natural process that I have wasted time trying to purge. I accept that I am love.

It was important for me to use water as a cipher within this work because it is a destructive yet gentle force of nature. Water is restless yet still, transparent yet opaque, adaptive yet predictable, loud yet quiet, beautiful yet lethal. It is greater than life and I cannot control it.