The Imaginary Imagination

Brittany A. Forrest

Apr 2023 · Brittany Forrest

About this ebook

This book, titled The Imaginary Imagination written by visual artist Brittany/Andrew Forrest (she/her), acts as an appendage to her art practice. It contains a collection of vulnerable autobiographical accounts that embody themes that consider identity dysphoria, perception fabrications, mnemonic memory retrieval, power dynamics, sensory perception, gender assimilation, and sexual autonomy in relation to childhood, adolescent, and adult trauma. This, second edition, ebook works to dissect the anatomy of the imagination by separating each chapter into fragments; curiosity, survival, anxiety, hallucination, queerness, love, dreaming, and abandonment. Each chapter contains multiple stories and each one stresses an imagination disruptor. Just as in Forrest’s art practice, she endeavors to probe and enlarge the human understanding of what identity embodies by assessing ambivalent human exchange and the unspoken interactions between them. Her writing functions as a stream of conscious and subconscious thought, that ranges from overt to obscure, shaped around memories. Words allude to innumerable meanings. The first edition of this book was a hardcover single copy cased in a sculpture. The form reveals thoughts about gender assimilation, as gender expression is a major visual element that wraps our identity. It began with a found object, a jewelry box, that represents a mnemonic memory that considers the curiosity of her childhood engagement with her mother's belongings.

To see the casing of the hard copy, and other work from this artist, please visit www.brittanyforrest.com

About the author

Brittany Forrest (she/her) began her study of the body through performing arts as a child. Rigorous observational skills transitioned into a thriving art practice penetrating all facets of the body. Her practice dissects human exchange and perception, to find correlations that allow her to resolve alienation. By engaging in the odyssey of her own lost identity, Forrest asks where it went. She reflects on the destabilizing family dysfunction she was raised in and the estrangement that followed. Forrest grapples for connection with her viewers and within herself. She upholds this as a solution, a level of awareness that could alleviate the toxicity that breeds social issues within our contemporary context. This trauma mediation joins many deeply troubling human conditions. The correlation lays within the intimacy of alienation, the perceptions may vary but the disruption of one’s identity as sacrifice for security is shared.

 

Identifying as queer, Forrest is an Ontario-based surrealist cerebral artist and creative writer. Forrest primarily focuses on character development through methods of drawing, sculpting, and mould-making. She probes materiality and themes that epitomize sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Forrest is persuaded by authors such as Anthony Burgess, Albert Camus, Carl Jung, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Haruki Murakami, and Sigmund Freud. As well as directors such as David Cronenberg, David Lynch, and Stanley Kubrick.

 

Forrest graduated with honors in Bachelor of Fine Arts, minoring in Art History, from McMaster University. She was rewarded four academic scholarships, voted class choice, and was selected for the faculty award for her final thesis exhibition. She is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Western University. Here she engages in a thriving relationship with her mentor Jessica Karuhanga, other talented professors, and visiting artists, such as Nicholas Crombach and Sean Caulfield. Forrest was recently granted the Graduate Thesis Research Award.