Illustration

Take Me to Eden

Audrey Boy

“… an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. The existence is material”

(Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 695).

Statement

Take Me to Eden is an installation of driftwood sculptures, handmade books, and drawings which reflect on gardens as symbolic sites where interactions between humans and environment become profound, creative, and impact the future. The contents of the installation are inspired by gardens which have major significance in the Bible: Eden, Gethsemane, and Golgotha.

Acknowledging the ways histories, facts, and fictions become intertwined in the materialization of reality, this project is propelled forward by two questions: how do we become, and how does an object, site, or text, become sacred? The answer seems clear – through ideology, i.e. story.

Drawing from my culture as a non-denominational North American Christian, Take Me to Eden centres on the stories I grew up with in the Christian faith and and delves into autobiographical details of my personal experiences with spirituality and religion. In this project Eden becomes a site of colliding timelines into which I weave my own spiritual experiences and scenes from Genesis and Christ’s passion through a personal index of symbols to gain perspective on my beliefs.

I see Eden as a site of creation and transformation. In Take Me to Eden, Eden becomes a stage for becoming; a sanctuary for my questions and revelations about my ideology to materialize.

Take Me to Eden Installation, driftwood, beads, paper, graphite, gold leaf, various fabric, personal religious artifacts

All elements of Take Me to Eden (fabric, driftwood, personal religious artifacts, drawings) play into creating an interactive environment that is contemplative and reflective of my upbringing in a remote Christian community on Vancouver Island. Playing with levels of transparency, I use fabric and paper to obscure, highlight, and reveal as an ode to the notion of ‘the veil’ as an experience of reality, and also the torn temple veil mentioned in the Gospels.

The Knowing Tree, driftwood, paper, graphite, personal religious artifacts, cotton string, seaweed cord, fabric, metallic thread, beads

Mystery Tree & Eden Book (2022/2023), driftwood, fabric, beads, metallic thread, tracing paper, graphite, card stock, gold paint

Eve Tree (2022/2023), plywood, driftwood, metallic string, egg tempera, gold leaf, gold acrylic paint, fabric, beads

Prologue/Epilogue Series (2022/2023)

11 x 14″, mechanical pencil drawings on sketchbook paper

Prologue/Epilogue Book (2023)

8 x 8″, card stock, raw canvas, inkjet prints, glass beads, cotton string, pearls, metallic thread, gold leaf

Eden Book (2022)

7 x 9 “, Polyester organza, metallic thread, string, tracing paper, handmade paper, graphite.

All roads lead to home,

I am lonely, I am alone.

Take me to the mountain

I need to meet my maker

The one who put me here

Take me back to Eden

I need to meet my maker

I need to plant my friends a home.

I need the seeds for Eden

Who holds the keys to Eden?

Take me back to Eden

Bring me home.

Take Me To Eden Zine (2023)

Take me to Eden…

The things I’ve been feeling…

I need to plant my hands

in hot

hot, hot tears

to warm my

cold cold

cold

fingers

and be

seen by a mystery

who

might

tell me She remembers me.

The Questioning Pamphlet (2022)

8.5 x 11 “, B&W Inkjet print on letter sized printer paper

AUDREY BOY ARTIST STATEMENT:

I am a storyteller. My observations and experiences are reflected on and decorated in the worlds I create. I draw, write, sculpt, paint, sew, and perform to assemble and disassemble the stories I’ve been given to make sense of the world and create new stories to give away for our healing. I make things that are beautiful and purposeful; finding inspiration in cycles of rebirth, tall cedars swaying and creaking in the wind, looming swells on an open ocean, and the feeling of being small in the wake of a larger than life experience. Making artwork is my way to walk home. I spent six years of my childhood off grid in a remote Christian community on the territory of the Ehattesaht people of the Nuu-chah-nulth. That land raised me to be the artist I am today. I am grateful to Nuu-chah-nulth peers and Elders for teaching me the power and importance of knowing your stories; and to my Mom, who made sure I knew mine.