Mobile Snapping House (2024) is an exploration of the generational barriers we build up around ourselves from ancestral trauma. Within the cultural zeitgeist, conversations of epigenetic and generational trauma have found their way into the conscious minds of many Americans, pushing forward a personal as well as familial relationship to trauma. With the ever-present rise of an unstable political climate, many are seeking to look back through their ancestry for answers and to reconcile the generations of unrest within familial histories and the desire for community.

This process of reconciliation confronts us with our own histories, situated in a grander context, which has a direct effect on our families and us as the carriers of a vast inheritance of blessings and curses. Yet, it is also important to note, that while these concepts are “new” to the western mind, cultures and peoples with ancestral traditions and connections have always understood inheritance in this way.

I chose to explore an aspect of how my own intergenerational trauma exists as both love and heartbreak through the underbelly of a snapping turtle. The shell of the turtle, a metaphorical barrier, both protective and hindering to intimacy, serves as the moving embodiment of my ancestral inheritance. Carrying the weight of intergenerational trauma within its body (war, famine, abuse, itinerancy) while sheltering its tender pinpricked insides (tenderness, care, love, and kindness).