Tegan Dedekind

Contemporary Art and Illustration BA(Hons)

The Good Girl, is a large-scale drawing, the culmination of personal experiences and memories from my childhood, explored and expanded on paper in the form of repetitive writing and symbols. The inspiration for this piece is the gender-based violence and misogyny of South Africa, which feels very present to me even after living in the UK for seven years. I experience a sense of unresolved generational trauma from the cultural background I am now dislocated from.  

I used compressed charcoal on 3m tall pieces of paper using my whole body, creating clouds of shadows and symbols. I added cathartic repetitive writing with spray paint, ink, and chalk. The excess of detail makes the writing hard to see, and invites the viewer closer, even if their desire to make sense is confounded.