Brigham Young University
by Fidalis Buehler
For me, the act of painting is a form of (re)collection—rebuilding memories from the fragments that remain. It is an excavation of lived experience, traced through the strata of surrounding histories and the anecdotal moments that intersect with my own. This process becomes a way to shape the visual narratives I want to portray. Words from the Bone Box is a metaphor for this practice of memory-making that references my Tungaruan (Kiribati) heritage of recalling history through the literal bones of ancestors. In the absence of such bones, and without a formal ritual to frame remembrance, I turn to other surrogates—objects, photographs, sounds, scents—as means of peering into my past.