Don’t Cry is a sculpture composed of milk cartons. The work addresses feelings of nostalgia, longing for the past, childhood memories, loss of innocence, and is part of a larger body of work where I have made fake products that ask the question: are we what we consume? This piece is self-referential, addressing my own childhood- right down to the product of strawberry milk, as it was what my mother would give me whenever I was upset as a small child. I have even made myself into a missing kid on a milk carton- because that child is gone. All that is left of her are memories.
All aspects of the milk cartons have been edited including the nutritional facts, the brand, the bar codes, the visuals, etc. Embedded messages and clues reflect the sense of loss we feel when we reminisce about childhood, and more specifically, the traumas that tend to lay dormant underneath.