Tracey Williams, Artist

A Short History of Some Other Things, 2006

“It’s about storytelling and trying to engage people. It’s a narrative that defies closure – it opens up questions – ie it doesn’t tell you what to think,” she says.
“You are put in a place where you have a different relation to things that you may already know [Disney characters, cowboys, pukeko]. When things are really familiar  you never question them. Images that you have grown up with background your psyche.”
Williams says her work is an antidote to the “grand narratives” people define themselves by. She is interested in the way people pick and choose from their life experience to define themselves. 
It’s part of the adopt-a-culture trend in modern life, she says.
“People look outside themselves to find meaning. It’s a collaging of images. US culture seems to have taken its contemporary rules off TV and we are kind of doing that here. I find that really sad. People are desperate to find an identity but they don’t stand still long enough.
“We have become such a commodified culture. I buy that car, I am that car. I buy those clothes, I am those clothes. There’s a sad lack of ethics underneath it.”
In identifying ourselves or our race as possessing certain traits, we risk overlooking shared humanity, she says.

Image and text source from ARTZONE.