Artist Statement

Erica Covolan is interested in exploring identity and displacement, in particular the effects of geographical and cultural dislocation on one’s sense of self. Through her printmaking and drawing practice she explores the porousness of the migratory experience, which forms part of her personal story, and the effects it has on one’s identity and sense of belonging.

Using the granular quality of aquatint and etching techniques, and the dusty chalkiness of charcoal and soft pastels, her work seeks to convey a sense of yanking away, tearing apart, pulling something from its rightful place not only in physical, geographical terms, but also psychologically and emotionally. It implies a sense of an earlier state, the loss of that state and the memory of it which, with time, becomes precarious, impermanent, constantly morphing.

The dislocation/relocation process often results in a liminal state existing in-between, a constant renegotiation and reaffirmation of one’s place between the here and there, between belonging and not belonging, between a place imagined and a place experienced.