Speaking of Scars
Teresa Eng
Self-Published
Hardcover
68 pages
170 x 228 mm
2012
ISBN 9780957404106
‘Speaking of Scars’ deals with trauma and memory. During a three year period, photography was used to process an experience that couldn’t be processed. In the book memory takes the form of images, as it repeats and reconfigures itself around new and existing experiences. Despite the fragile nature of the images, the book expresses its brutal subject in a delicate way as it explores the complexity of trauma. The details of banal life offer up a world where things once seemingly benign become menacing; yet beauty holds resonance. ‘Speaking of Scars” is an expression of the unspeakable, taking inconceivable events and transforming them into a visible language.
About the Artist
Teresa Eng is interested in the ever-changing world and its relationship to history. Her introspective nature has led her revisit a particular subject over a period of time, revisiting a place over several months to a few years. This temporal and physical distance allows her process to her thoughts while allowing new and existing strands of ideas to merge together. Teresa’s projects explore the fragmentation of identity in the diaspora communities and in the digital world, the psychological state of trauma, and the changing nature of neighbourhood and cities. Teresa was awaded 2019 Burtynksy Grant and a finalist for 2019 Aperture Portfolio Prize and the Hyéres 33e festival of fashion and photography. Her first book, “Speaking of scars’, was shortlisted for the 2013 Aperture/Paris Photo First Book Award.
