Artist’s Statement

I make drawings and paintings that focus on memory or identity, and how these can interact with the body as a vessel of all of one’s history and shared experience. I explore the concept of bodies as a home for the good and bad, that branches outward to history, family, and the public and political space.

I look beyond the human body as well, and make work depicting animals of burden and their use as symbols in art history. They have been frequently used as a sacrifice, both symbolically and literally. I am interested in the idea of sacrifice from the perspective of the one being sacrificed - exploding that grand narrative with the interiority of the symbol itself. These animals’ bodies become vessels for both the hopes and sins of the people sacrificing them. In my piece “shepherd,” the sheep surround a figure at rest, either living or dead, and the sheep are there for both protection and in community with them. 

Another aspect of a body that I explore is that of gender. Gender is a performance, seen from the outside, and projected upon with meaning and epic narratives about purpose. I want to peel away external imposition of meaning with the complex, fluid experience of gender from within. Donning external aspects of gender for safety, or for profit, or to elicit specific reactions can be both a useful tool and a dehumanizing personal experience. I look at gender as from both an internal and performed experience, and how both of these are true and real in different ways. 

Art can be a point of access to a space where time and place are suspended. Details can be obscured and melt together, but the effects of their happening are not felt any less profoundly or physically. I have been exploring doing this further with my visual art, as well as with both performance and language. The connection to the lives and experiences of my ancestors exist in me, and the enactment of rituals, crafts, and speech can call upon them. It is essential to me that I respect and preserve the history and memory of my ancestors that still lives in my body.