Scribd
Upload
80 views1 page

Badger

Marshall Badger creates artwork that uses narrative to communicate recovery from trauma and to broadcast private pain to a wider audience in order to start conversations. Their work draws on their family's history of abuse and neglect, showing how trauma is passed down through generations. They aim to challenge the cultural pressure to disguise trauma and instead have open discussions about systemic trauma. Badger takes inspiration from other creators who use interactive media to explore discomfort and personal growth, as well as from their Christian upbringing, to incorporate storytelling and its ability to connect people on a human level.

Uploaded by

api-527318422
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
80 views1 page

Badger

Marshall Badger creates artwork that uses narrative to communicate recovery from trauma and to broadcast private pain to a wider audience in order to start conversations. Their work draws on their family's history of abuse and neglect, showing how trauma is passed down through generations. They aim to challenge the cultural pressure to disguise trauma and instead have open discussions about systemic trauma. Badger takes inspiration from other creators who use interactive media to explore discomfort and personal growth, as well as from their Christian upbringing, to incorporate storytelling and its ability to connect people on a human level.

Uploaded by

api-527318422
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

Marshall Badger

My artwork centers on narrative as a vehicle for communicating the process of recovery


from trauma and growing beyond its reach. By constructing these narratives in an
audio-visual medium, my stories of intimate tragedy become magnified beyond my
singular body and are instead broadcasted to a multitude of people. These public
expressions of private pain are not an end unto itself; these are instead the beginnings
of conversations beyond my limited self. I will not exist forever and neither will my
trauma, but the documentation and exploration of myself is worth preserving for future
viewers who may recognize themselves in me.

My work draws on my family’s history of abuse, neglect, and trauma in a domestic


setting. My suffering did not spontaneously occur in a vacuum but is instead the fallout
of previous traumas before mine. A hand raised in anger at me was not one hand, but
many hands raised against many before me. The generational repetition makes me so
angry, like my body is full of pins pushing out through my skin. I, you, we deserve better
than to inflict suffering on those who will follow us. We owe it to ourselves to leave this
world better than we found it.

There is a social pressure that follows after traumatic experiences in modern American
culture. On a cultural scale, we desperately attempt to disguise these events in an effort
to maintain a veneer of normalcy in polite society. Rather than disappearing entirely,
these topics instead surface in secretive conversations as foci of shame. It is all too
common to treat these as unfortunate—but isolated—incidents of personal failings to
apologize for rather than widespread and systemic trauma that must be challenged on
the same level that it impacts us. Our culture has a history of lionizing sanitized
narratives of abuse and trauma that are didactic and easily digestible, making the
complex and messy trauma responses of our imperfect peers difficult to accept.
I look to creators before me for guidance on how to present outwardly express these
inner struggles. Scott Benson, animator and game developer, uses video to explore
how far one can fragment and compress information and still produce a coherent
through-line. Bennett Foddy, game designer and philosopher, invites his audience to sit
with him in experiences of discomfort, frustration, and pain as exercises in personal
growth. Their creations are not meant as avenues of easy pleasure, but rather as
cynosures for contemplating who we are and why we act as we do.

Beyond the art world, I pull inspiration from my family's long involvement in the Christian
church. Despite my personal departure from organized religion, Christianity was a
formative part of my life and continues to influence my work. It is the origin point of my
fixation on oral storytelling as a medium and acts as a stepping stone in describing my
struggles. Storytelling is the lifeblood of humanity, an extension of our ability to see
patterns even when there are none. It satisfies our need to connect cause and effect, to
explain why the world around us behaves as it does. Storytelling is the heart of curiosity,
exploration, and intimacy. To tell a story is to connect with another on the deepest level,
at the point of one’s humanity.

You might also like