My work is about memory and creating “trauma holding spaces”. I am interested in history, time, and its illusionary nature. While we cannot trust its narrative completely, we cannot live without it. Within the realms of time and memory, we create our history and our own identity.
I strive to create spaces where trauma, sadness, and hardship can reside and therefore be contained. This can make my work seem busy, but it is the nature of these elements that can distort our vision of ourselves and the realities that surround us. It is where the perceptions of the personal and the collective merge together.
My personal history and my journey as an Arab immigrant have a strong influence on my work. My background as a poet shows in work where I entwine my abstract with poetry or images that belong to my roots or elements from within my identity.
“My work is about the illusionary nature of memory, of time, and about creating “trauma holding spaces”
About The Artist
Barnes is a multidisciplinary American Arab artist. She is a visual artist, poet, writer, physician, entrepreneur, and medical technology enthusiast. Her work spans various mediums and techniques, including photography, composite photography, digital, and a hybrid of painting using pastel and acrylic and digital work. Barnes’s works sometimes use experimental methods, such as her own paintings in algorithmic artwork. Most of her work is abstract, which seems to lend itself well to her artistic expression.
