Statement

Children are not born with a unified sense of self. They are, however, born with an innate ability to detect when they are being harmed. When they are faced at early stages of development with overwhelming or life threatening experiences, especially at the hands of caregivers, the normal integrated function of safe attachment is impossible and so a disordered and non-integrated, or dissociative response results.

My relationship to my body is the result of such a disordered process. I have never really fully inhabited it.

The figures in my work represent aspects of myself not yet integrated into a working whole of personality. They each have their experience of the world, relationships to each other, and feelings about what is essentially a shared body. For most of them the body is a danger zone, it is enemy territory. Entering it is a huge risk.

Our trajectories should lead towards cohesiveness and healing. The brain wants to repair itself; the heart desires more than anything else, safe, intimate attachment. I feel that want daily, with an almost unspeakable acuteness, but I haven't managed to overcome my dissociation. So you see in my work the only place where it feels safe to inhabit the body. You see me there, in my varied incarnations, looking back at you, the viewer. I am as vulnerable on paper and canvas as it is possible for me to be.

Biography

I have an extraordinary personal history, the details of which are almost guaranteed to invite incredulity. I am a survivor of torture and medical experimentation, beginning in childhood, both private and tax-funded. By exhibiting my artwork, I hope to raise awareness about these ongoing, yet widely unexposed human rights abuses committed against children and adults here in the US and other Western nations.

In service of this goal, in 2010, I intentionally created an additional alter ego named DIDiva. As a public persona, she is designed to help combat the stigma and ignorance surrounding responses to trauma such as dissociative conditions, but more specifically, to challenge the negatively sensationalized caricature of Dissociative Identity Disorder popularized by Hollywood and the media. DIDiva has served me well as a flamboyant Mistress of Ceremonies and hostess during recent showings of my artwork. She also holds forth at DIDiva.com, an informational website about DID.

There is a great deal of revealing biographical information, in this Opening Statement, and on the Franklin & Madeline show pages. I also maintain a personal, activist site at LynnsArt.net