Jay Hand

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

a story is a spell

I have collected evidence of the fantastical world. I have made dream journals and documents that describe as closely as possible the deities and daemons that traverse the real that is spoken of in psychological circles, in support groups, between friends, and when whispering to a god. I have made books which are themselves made from the deconstructed pieces of a mural which once dominated my entire world. My original intention was to process my emotional states on the walls of my studio as a reclamation of my body, but what happened was what I can best describe as a summoning of the most dangerous of these daemons into a mural where they vandalised the space I felt safe.

Through bookmaking, using the pages of the mural, I want to make sense of these emotions using the fantastical as a language of conversation with the histories of people that brought me here. By disassembling the mural, I let go of a whole story by embracing the multiplicity of the pieces. To access some sense of the collective unconscious that I was raised within as a descendent of English, Irish and Welsh people, I have explored various pantheons of mythology, including Norse, Celtic and Christian folklore. These stories, as they were told to me as a child, are guides along a path of understanding where my sense of reality, good and bad, logical and magical, all come from. This is all in an attempt to become a better dissident of whiteness and normalcy now that I am a grown-up in South Africa.