STATEMENT OF WORK

My project-based sculptural practice examines life both inside and outside rigid, limiting binary systems. More specifically, I investigate internal bodily experiences from a biopolitical lens and question how structural and organizational systems support and/or hinder our perception of both our surroundings and ourselves. Conceptually, the work I create varies- from projects that draw on uncanny parallels between bodily systems and ecological and/or industrial structures to installations that expose the limitations of categorization. Driving each project is a curiosity about what it means to have a body and how it interacts with our environment.

Based on both my lived experience and drawing on my previous background in biology research, my work frequently questions the constrictive nature of European academic sciences. My practice is informed by and attempts to elevate alternative forms of knowledge production. For generative support, I look to writers and theorists whose research advances knowledge and understanding in the fields of trans theory, crip theory, queer ecology, and many other socio/relational areas of study that bolster our understanding of identity and the world around us.

At the core, I am a builder and a maker. The diverse installations I create each rely on material associations that allude to specific geography and systems. I design sculptures and installations using common industrial materials like wood, steel, and concrete to recreate odd facsimiles of our lived environment. Within these strange and varied landscapes, I ground unnameable, biomorphic forms created from carved wood, ceramic, and/or silicone. My visual exploration of the body requires malleable materials to carve, construct, and mold into abstract bodily forms. To provide further context within my installations, I layer alternative methods of making using photography, sound, and/or moving image. These iterative translations add nuance and legibility to help guide the viewer.

Generally, a type of world-building of “the future past” drives my practice. This process relies on an initial imagining of a symbiotic biome devoid of hierarchical structures, yet inevitably our anthropocentric nature complicates this idyllic world-building. This friction is at the root of my practice.