Michelle Morby

Bio

Michelle Morby is an intermedia artist who works primarily in photography and performance. Morby has been trotting the globe snapping pictures of friends and family, imagined and real, for the last 10 years. She was educated at Bard College, Boston Museum School, Parsons School Of Design, School of the Visual Arts and School, Boston Art Institute, Speos Photographic Institute Paris and the San Francisco Art Institute. Known best for her evocative photographs projected onto sensuous textiles. She had her debut solo exhibition at Ochi Gallery in Sun Valley ID in 2001. Morby continues to explore the medium with her present ongoing body of work in which she imagines, performs and photographs herself as her unknown biological mother in 1970s Argentina. Michelle Morby lives, works and plays in San Francisco, California.

Statement

This body of work is an homage to a women I never knew. In these photographs I am exploring the identity of my biological birth mother by taking on her identity and performing what I imagine her life to have been like in Argentina in the final weeks of her pregnancy. My biological mother and her culture have always been a powerful mystery for me; before I ventured down to Argentina for the shooting of this project I knew almost nothing about her. I have constructed her life and her mannerisms a million times over in my imagination. When in Argentina, a lot of my ideas around my mother in her culture either changed or came in to an especially vivid focus. As a result the photographs and my performance of her identity became far more emotionally charged than I had expected. At the time of her pregnancy political instability during the Dirty War must have terrified her. In the 1970's, young unwed Argentine women were given no options other than adoption or else they would run the risk of being rejected from their families. These photographs reflect the sadness I imagine for her given her lack of agency and the knowledge of her imminent loss. Who was this young woman and what were her circumstances? These pictures float between real places and the embellishments of my daydreams. I have been haunted by a past, which I have been forced to reconstruct solely in my imagination for as long as I can remember. This work is about ghosts.