Conversations With Myself
Jo Ann Chaus, April 6 2021 (additional text by Debra Klomp Ching)
After seven years of documenting and exploring my relationships with and within my family of origin, in 2016 I self-published the work Sweetie & Hansom, and began the current series of self-portraits, Conversations with Myself, in which I dress and perform as a mid century woman, appropriating the garb and demeanor of my mother's generation.
As I inhabited each character, I personified and interpreted the burdens I believed they carried, indoctrinated by expectations and social mores of that era. In truth, I recognized my own discord and incongruity embedded in the traditional roles and self-imposed constraints I'd assumed as wife, mother and woman. My latent voice emerged regarding the rights of all to contribute freely, with respect and consideration, to the conversation and the business of reaching one's potential and living a full life.
