Hernease Davis’s A Womb of My Own (Mistakes Were Made in Development): Make New of You
#8 © Hernease Davis
Trauma is caused by a distressing event—or a series of distressing events. Trauma, itself, is damage as a result of the distress to the mind. Of all the ways, shapes, and forms damage comes in, when I think of the damage caused by trauma, I imagine a fracture in the mind. One’s carefully contrived image of oneself is shattered. One must go under development, pick up those pieces, rearrange them, and, thus, make new.
The healing process is a series of transcendental waters you go under that connects you to your new self. Hernease Davis, a Brooklyn-based artist and someone who has experience with trauma, rebirths herself by way of her artistic practice. In her latest project A Womb of My Own (Mistakes Were Made in Development), Davis dives into the creative process, coming out of it renewed, or born-again. Her artwork is a documentation of her personal healing process.
#1 © Hernease Davis
The life-sized, self-portrait photogram captioned “#1” is proportionately spread apart in three-by-three equal panels. Davis utilizes the silver gelatin process to give the pictures a black-and-white effect, which makes me think its subject, Davis seems to be in a screening, the kind that examines one’s developmental stage. Therefore, it could be said that the photogram is, in fact, a sonogram of Davis underdevelopment.
#14 © Hernease Davis
In another silver gelatin photogram captioned “#14,” the image of the subject is broken and spread, deliberately disproportioned. For me, this speaks to the second part of the project’s title (Mistakes Were Made in Development).
Not only does Davis document her own healing process, but she also provides those who have experienced trauma with a safe practice, self-caring practice, to overcome it. Davis tells us creation could be key.
If you are someone who has experienced a trauma, in the doom and gloom of it, it may seem, at times, that you are irretrievably lost. Trust that that is not your truth. Trust it is nobody’s truth. Davis makes evident in AA Womb of My Own (Mistakes Were Made in Development) that, while we’re beings that can be brought down, sometimes, broken down; in light of this, we can become new again by using those pieces because we are beings of creation.
To view more of Hernease Davis’ work, click here.
