Holly D. Gray

Holly D. Gray

Holly D. Gray

Arlington

Texas

USA

Becoming a mother is an undoubtedly life-altering experience. As the mother of a child, born with multiple disabilities, my experience of becoming a parent was drastically different from that of the norm. With a shift that was existentially consuming, I was thrust into a new identity as a female and artist.

Carol Hanisch wrote “the personal is political.” My work fully embodies this notion by offering a political perspective on disability that is solely based on my personal experiences. By walking the fine line of empowering my daughter with strength and independence while appeasing the political, insurance and medical models; the themes of my work can present themselves as questioning and demure while the objects themselves hold power.

By situating my art practice in the context of maternalism, I’m not making work about motherhood, but out of it. By offering visuals of detritus, consumption, politics, identity, domesticity and healthcare; I’m offer a chance to discern emotion, rethink assumptions and to consider what constitutes a life worth living.