For my Parsons BFA Thesis in 2023, I worked through with my own family archives. Most of these photos referenced my Nonna’s upbringing in East Harlem and my Dad’s upbringing in Pelham Bay. In accessing these archives I had hoped to resurrect the world of family oral traditions that no longer had material footing. My Nonna’s apartment had been torn down for a number of years, but I felt that her stories were always so alive. I manipulated and distorted the photos to feel like a dream or memory, since I wasn’t alive for a lot of these retellings and with a visually ever-changing New York it is often hard to clearly imagine what this looked like beyond the archives and my imagination. When I printed the photos, I utilized domestic fabrics such as linen and cotton sheeting to activate the type of household my Nonna lived in: sewing her children’s clothes, drying manicotti on bedsheets all Sunday afternoon, hanging up clothes to dry on an interlocked apartment clothesline. I also enjoyed printing the photos on fabric because it made them malleable, able to be shaped and formed into something that felt alive. The rest of my studio objects were either sourced directly through my family’s knick-knacks, found on the street, or bought at a thrift store.