Becky’s Purse (Pre-sale)

Description

Becky’s Purse is a speculative archive built from photographs of the contents of a handbag and handwritten fragments belonging to Becky, a close friend living with methamphetamine addiction and schizophrenia in Vancouver, Canada. The handbag contains the tools that facilitate daily life. Beauty accessories and personal items reveal how the representation of femininity through body stylization persists within addiction, while also carrying inherent risks and vulnerabilities.

The numbered images operate as evidence within an extended investigation into the banality of addiction: the routines, repetitions, and small decisions that structure everyday survival. Rather than focusing on moments of crisis, a narrative emerges in the ordinary and continuous, allowing a broader social emergency to be understood through lived experience.

The sequence traces Becky’s identity through the aesthetics and paraphernalia of Y2K culture, which she continues to embody in her clothing and grooming habits formed during childhood and early adolescence. Becky and the author, Mia Glanz, became friends in second grade, when they were partnered to draw and describe each other to the class. This long-term relationship shapes the project’s perspective and sense of care.

Conceived specifically for the book form, the work unfolds through repetition, pauses, and blank space. Photography here functions as a way of preserving and organizing experiences that might otherwise remain invisible, ignored, or forgotten. Becky’s Purse is an exercise in seeing with empathy and questioning the implications of being seen.

About the author:

Mia Glanz is a Canadian artist, writer, photographer, and moving image maker based in Mexico City. She is currently completing a Master’s degree in Visual Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Working at the intersection of experimental ethnography, photography, writing, and installation, she uses series and montage to investigate the relationship between representation and lived experience. Her work explores time, narrative, and memory through the traces in places, things, and symbols. She has exhibited in Canada, Mexico, and France, including at La Antigua Academia de San Carlos, Capture Photography Festival, and Artspeak. Recent projects include Florecer (2026), a mixed-media installation examining embodied time through photography, narrative, and floral symbolism; and Becky’s Purse, an exhibition and publication exploring addiction, friendship, and memory through text and the contents of a handbag.