ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a visual artist working in multimedia sculpture, immersive installation, and performative action. My current body of work is a self-reflective investigation into my experiences as a young queer and nonbinary person growing up in an underprivileged household. Drawing upon personal archives and obscure childhood memories, I craft psychologically charged domestic environments and ritualistic interactions that lie somewhere between memory and dreamscape. I am interested in manifestations of trauma stemming from inherited mental illness, abusive experiences, childhood poverty, and suppressed facets of identity. 

Oftentimes, the work begins with found objects: toys from childhood, journal pages, or a lock of hair.  These are storytelling objects, remnants of the domestic sphere that have a personal narrative formed through associations and experiences. Other times the work starts with a compulsion: “Lock me inside a tube-TV filled with green Jell-O.” Driven by these points of fascination, I combine sculptural methods such as body casting with techniques borrowed from costume design and home construction to create physical manifestations of complex emotional states, memories, and interactions. The work is a hybrid of assemblage and fabrication, blurring the distinction between archival collection and theatrical display. 

Interactive installation and performative action are my modes of engagement with the viewer. Through the physical and social awareness garnered by interactive and immersive experiences I aim to achieve a more vulnerable and empathic form of viewership. I hope to create spaces of solidarity and catharsis, and to offer a chance for empathic and educational dialogue surrounding topics often steeped in guilt, fear, and uncertainty.