Isabella Dampney

Autofictional Painting and Social Critique

The artworks collected in A Child of Divorce combine autofictional painting and social critique to respond to events and objects in my life that I find absurd, synchronous, sad, or morally suspect. These paintings and drawings produce a personal archive, the connections between works being simultaneously contradictory and synchronous.

Through the partial fictionality of the works, I critique my experiences with social alienation, low-wage precarious employment, and the dysfunction of family relationships and friendships. The inconsistent nature of autofiction allows me to express the material of my life with distance. I emphasise absurd moments to critique my experiences of unmet social expectations—and use text and titling to foreground interpersonal tension as a subject of investigation.