Detachment
Skye Tao
See it On Campus: Level 2
Visitor InfoThe first work exhibited to the right of The Rennie Hall
Award Recipient
The Chick Rice Award for Excellence in Photography – Honourable Mention
Detachment, 2023
In Detachment, I intended to explore the feelings of involuntary detachment from social norms and the effects of societal pressure on young adults. The series reflects on the transition from adolescence to adulthood, which is often seen as a time of freedom and self-discovery. However, this transition is met with challenges and expectations that can lead to a heavy mental strain. Detachment conveys the struggle of reconciling one’s cultural background with the demands of modern society. The pressure to conform to social norms and expectations can lead to feelings of detachment and a loss of individuality. The project captures this experience through a series of photographs that depict withered versions of the self, struggling to find meaning in a world that often feels disorienting.
Second Home, 2022
Cookies are Ready, 2022
Haircut, 2022
Play a G, 2022
Second Home is a self-portrait series where I recreate the distant memories between my two siblings and me through staged photography. In Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny, he describes the uncanny sensation emerging as the familiar and the unfamiliar simultaneously coexisting. He states “… whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate”. I positioned us all in a minimal scene to emphasize the connection between the two subjects. We are positioned in a stoic manner to mimic dolls. A doll is a familiar object that symbolizes children and reminiscences of childhood memories. Those memories brought my sister and me back together to recreate the bond that we once shared. We are now unfamiliar people being directed by a familiar shared memory, thus creating uncanniness by performing those vague memories through our current selves.
Second Home, 2022
