Liah Bean

my practice centers on the narratives we construct: family histories, small town folklore, and the stories we tell to make sense of grief, loss, and everyday tragedy. humor functions as a coping mechanism and means of metabolizing pain. the jokes we crack at funerals and the laughter that emerges when tears would be more appropriate inspire the tone of my work.

much of my work engages with tangles, both literal (thread, fiber, knotted material) and metaphorical (familial dynamics, the recursive nature of personal history, grief that resists resolution). these are things that cannot be easily undone or explained, that must be lived with in their complexity.

i'm interested in what gets passed down through generations: the heirlooms and the traumas, the recipes and the resentments. small town gossip operates as a form of collective memory, and i'm drawn to examining how communities determine which stories matter and which ones get buried or forgotten.

poverty intersects with all of this. scarcity shapes narrative. making do, mending, keeping things functional past their expected lifespan, these practices carry their own aesthetic and philosophy. there's creativity born from necessity. shame and pride exist simultaneously in working class life. class determines whose folklore gets preserved in archives and whose gets dismissed as merely anecdotal.

i'm an archivist: documenting family history, personal history, and the evolving self on the internet. preservation is the basis for most of my practice, even if not purposefully.

this work extends into teaching and community organizing, where questions of access, whose stories get told, and who gets to make art remain central.

process = progress