Artist Statement
“Grief is the most human of experiences, other than being born and dying”
(Dr. Ramani Durvasula)
Loss, death, and grief are unavoidable chapters of the human experience. Yet we are consistently unprepared to encounter and navigate such moments when they inevitably occur. Why? In my grief, I am faced with depths of denial that feel equally as raw as the experience of death itself. In the past six and a half years, I have lost three grandmothers, one grandfather, four aunts, three uncles, and my mother. This count does not include friends. These losses sharpen my awareness of the transient nature of our being and allow me to notice the bittersweetness of I will not experience this moment ever again.
My work is autobiographical and archival, reflecting loss, specifically of the matriline of my family. I focus on the grief I hold for the women in my family because I feel especially lost without their guidance. I step into a place of creative assumption in order to guide myself through life in their absence.
Recent works comprising my thesis exhibition included installation, writing, performance, sculpture, and photography. Working through a variety of media allows me to express narrative based on what the piece demands. I begin with an idea and then a question: how is this story asking to be told? Each life, death, and grief experience is unique, as should be the work that represents it.
Themes and motifs often found throughout my work include repetition, references to time, effort, and labor. I am interested in our efforts as humans to cope with living with and without those we find close. I think sometimes when our loved ones die, our efforts intensify as a sisyphean effort to rekindle what has been lost.
Questions that I am currently investigating in my art practice: How much of grief is societally implemented and how much is built into our existence as living beings? Is mourning the dead a hard and fast rule of being alive? How else will you know you loved someone?
Madisyn Lynn Simington(she/they) graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in visual art studies from Penn State University, Altoona College in May 2022. Their work often displays a passion for written work while exercising attention to visual, conceptual, and textural elements. In their senior exhibition, Mother’s Days(on display in the McLanahan Gallery at Penn State Altoona from April 7 -16, 2022), Simington focuses on the loss of her mother and creates visual conversations about mourning and grief.
Simington’s work has been featured in the McLanahan and Sheetz galleries as part of Penn State Altoona’s VAST exhibitions, Hard Freight Literary Magazine, Penn State Altoona’s African American Read-In, and at the Palmer Museum of Art in State College, PA. After graduation in May 2022, Simington is attending Penn State University's School of Visual Arts to pursue an MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography.