Phantom Normalcy

• Title: Phantom Normalcy
• Artist: Nicole
• Year: 2025
• Medium: Photographic digital prints on fabric

I don’t talk about my life growing up or why I left home at 16, other than I did. I left home, dropped out of school, then worked for $3.50 an hour. Things went downhill until I was couch surfing and sleeping rough. I remember being cold and wishing I had a pillow. Little invisible girl on the bench unable to see she was homeless. Technically, in my mind I wasn’t homeless. I had a home to go back to, and I’d chosen not to. By 18, I was pregnant. Then again at 24, raising my children on DSP. Life grew darker until I escaped violence at 35.
Making my artwork was harder than I expected. It was 30 years ago, and I’ve not spoken about it. I felt uncomfortable at the thought of touching it and that’s why I went with photography. I revisited where I’d slept (the bench is gone). My old work. His office. The choice to use dark tones with small details in colour was to convey how you want to find somewhere dark enough to sleep, but not too dark you can’t see what’s around you. The colour is to bring attention to details that represent grief and loss. The faded red in the top photo represents a loss of hope. The bottom photo is the most painful but least significant, representing how little I was worth to others and how broken that made me feel. The middle image with Pooh and an open book in full colour depicts the pretence of phantom normalcy.

When I was little, I read the poem ‘They’re Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace’ to myself over and over while dissociating from the chaos. I changed the poem I’d memorised over the years to reflect how childhood morphed into trauma.

“They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace, Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We saw a guard who was very tall, a home that’s not safe is not a home at all says Alice.

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. The fine ladies were wearing their beautiful collars, beds have a price, but it’s not in dollars says Alice.”

Throughout my life I’ve not been able to see or recognise what I was experiencing for what it actually was. I didn’t know I was homeless at 16. How could I when I got called a run-away, a delinquent, a troubled teen. No one used the word homeless. It was not workplace sexual harassment. It was assault. For 10 years, I couldn’t see the abuse in my marriage as domestic violence. I saw ads and images of women cowering from a raised fist and think – those poor women, they didn’t even do anything to deserve it. Unlike me; I was difficult. I deserved it.

My takeaway is, we can’t see that we’re homeless, sexually harassed in the workplace, or victims of domestic violence when the words aren’t used. Or, what we’re shown and taught isn’t reflective of real and diverse experiences. See what we’re going through, and tell us. Break the social construct of normalcy and say ‘this is homelessness, that was rape, assault is a form of harassment, what you’re experiencing is violence’ no matter how awkward it feels. Some of us need this. I’m alive today because someone eventually did just that.’

– Nicole