STATEMENT OF WORK

Demon comes from the Greek word daimōn meaning deity, genius, guiding spirit. Today, demon means evil spirit or devil. The word demon has been demonized. 

I am a research centric artist using different modes of making in an attempt to untangle stories that sit at the crossroads of histories and dominant cultural narratives. I focus on the subversion of words, including proper nouns, used in western histories, literature, religion and dictionaries. I investigate historical and contemporary texts and centuries old demonic grimoires. With my knowledge in Latin, etymology and my love of word games like anagrams along with a healthy dose of skepticism in translated text and its translators motives, I piece together bits of disparate facts in the attempt to find links between the persecution of polytheistic religions, women, queers and outsiders and established Abrahamic demons. I consider what is not or chosen not to be written and what writing could have been destroyed through natural disasters, fires and war. My makings reflect the stories not directly told in historical writings but lay in the inbetweenness of those histories. My intent is to revitalize what has been demonized through the objects I make. Like words, I am interested in the semiotic inversion of familiar domestic objects—specifically objects that are commonly found in many spiritual and religious practices that have been either culturally or spiritually elevated, subverted or both over time with the intent to find a sincere commonality across cultures, narratives and histories. I twist, weld and knead back together plausible narratives of ancient supernaturals and persons that have been undermined by the authors of patriarchal, historical writings to consider what and who were demonized then and are today. By dismantling this demonization through my critical fabrications,* I connect the past with the present to remember the future—Demons are other people.

*A play on Saidiya Hartman's “critical fabulations.”