Variations on a Theme of Butterflies (2021)

Variations on a Theme of Butterflies follows the story of a little girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina, inviting you into a state where dreams, fantasies, memories, and realities become blurred. An autobiographical multimedia installation and research project, Variations includes a collection of drawings, collages, poetry, sculpture, home videos, and a sound piece.

Through memoir and feminist reflexivity, this project considers how my personal story is part of a larger cultural phenomenon. At once looking critically at the history of ballet through the lens of love and loss, you are invited to come with me on journey of how the fantasy of becoming a ballerina died long ago but, in spite of everything, the dream of dancing is still alive.

The central object of the installation is a sculpture built from approximately eighty pairs of my dead pointe shoes. (After a dancer’s pointe shoes have become too worn out to wear, they are called dead.) Stacked like bones on top of each other, the sculpture acts as a memorial for a dream — of something that was once worn on the body but now is an empty shell.

Included in the exhibition is a collection of 10 drawings titled Adam (a man) (red) (red clay). Employing the feminist practice of reflexive writing, this series of drawings considers matters of gaze: seeing ourselves being seen by others; seeing ourselves being seen by ourselves.

The drawings narrate the memory of being chosen by a male artistic director of a ballet company when I was sixteen. Questionig innocence, vulnerability, and how the male gaze provokes visceral and emotional responses, sometimes that cannot be processed until years later until one can see themselves more clearly

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About the title: Variations on a Theme of Butterflies

Ballet is filled with winged and aerial creatures—sylphs, swans, faeries, ghosts—all to make allusions to angels and the image of the divine. Butterflies, too, have wings, but they are not born with them. Their entire existence depends on profound transformation, on beginning not-beautiful and then becoming beautiful.

In music, a variation on a theme is when the material is repeated over and over again, but in alternative forms, each time experiencing a small but significant change.

This project is about the small changes that remake us into new beings. It is about growing up. It's about not hiding yourself anymore. It’s about seeing all the things that they wanted you to be but you could never be, and realizing that you have the power within yourself to be anybody you want to be.