Dana Ariel (UCL) - 2014-15 Students
dana.ariel.11@ucl.ac.uk

Identity that refuses to identify, has no voice, and cannot be spoken

My research stems from the need to understand conflicting definitions in my own identity and contradicting legacies I inherited within a political and historical context. The failure of language and the lingering presence of silent witnesses led me to ask of the methods in which we define, replace, name and see. In my practice-led PhD I ask of identity and landscape through actions of naming sites and siting names. Witnessing, storytelling and bearing double marks are themes I explore through photography, printmaking, video and text. I question the structures shared by cultural and natural formations by tracing a split or a gap in the landscape of revisited sites of memory. The photographic act and the printing process allow me to give form to ambiguous notions of identities, standpoints and experience of landscape affected by violence.