About the Artist
Storm Bookhard is a New York born and raised 21 year old photographer, film maker, and conceptual artist based in Los Angeles. Through her art practice, she often explores concepts of essentialism in identity, the physical and cultural preservation of legacy, and the perils of seeing and being seen.
Her work is deeply informed by the investigation of tradition and its impact on individual and collective identity. In the form of video, photo-collage, and installation, Storm’s work uses material from both cultural and personal archives. Her work has previously been based in the evaluation of American History, specifically material surrounding the United States Presidents and their role as popular culture icons. This sector of her visual artwork functions as a curatorial and research driven practice that is guided by socio political and cultural contemplations. Her recent work is rooted in the investigation of the self through employing her current life, community, and personal history as a medium in the form of documentary style film and video.
About the Work
Untitled (Predisposition) is a multichannel video and sonic work that follows Bookhard’s process of navigating the unknowns of her ongoing mental illness. The piece addresses these complexities in the form of self interview, spliced footage, reordered phone conversations with loved ones, and narrated excerpts from memoir style essays. Factoring in her personal history of misdiagnosis and psychiatric malpractice, she works to excavate the daunting reality of self mystery. The parenthetical title “Predisposition” calls upon both the medical term “genetic predisposition” used to describe the likelihood of one’s inheritance of a condition as well as the colloquial uses of the word which refer to the reasoning behind one’s tendencies and actions. This title nods at the stories she shares in the auditory component of the piece, which are a reconciliation with how her illness has materialized throughout her life and the moments that have operated as both personal and medical crossroads. The piece at large reflects on the experience of feeling unknown to oneself and the anxiety of embarking on a journey without an explicit end in sight.