Debra Scacco

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

"Every map is a fiction." DJ Waldie, Holy Land Everything is a line: every boundary, every bridge, every river. We take lines for granted. We walk on them, drive on them, fly across them, travel through them, stay within them, are kept out of them. We are led to believe these lines are immovable. We are led to be believe we exist on the right side of the line. We are trained to fear what, or who, inhabits the territory on the other side. These are the lines by which we live: country lines, state lines, river lines, highway lines, train lines, power lines, water lines… We move amongst the lines as though we move freely. Yet they are not ours; they have been drawn for us. They are the scars of our past, circumscribing history, and how individuals are permitted to exist within them. My interest in these lines lies in my own immigrant history: in trying to understand the complicated shape of my own family, and the thousands of miles that separate us. My work is a study of lines of lineage, lines of passage, lines of policy. I question and contest these lines, reflecting a more accurate representation of our layered past by examining the structures of permission by which we live. In doing so, I highlight lines that are historically undocumented, unarchived, silenced.

Artwork