STATEMENT OF WORK

Shori Sims (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator exploring the slippage between subject and objecthood in the 21st century. Through drawing, painting, performance, and sculpture, they investigate the search for meaning in a symbol-mediated present and the impact of technology on culture (and vice versa). Their work centers Black figures, portraying them as mythologized subjects within media culture, where their lives and deaths are often metaphorized. At the same time, they depict moments of joy that create utopian worlds eschewing impossibility. Featuring symbols of nature, children, and fantasy creatures, their work blends the excitement of discovery with the unease of things yet to come, emphasizing the unknown forces that shape historical and cultural narratives.

As a performer, Sims is fascinated by what it takes for one individual to embody another. They often take on costumes that represent the many selves that coalesce into the individual, reflecting their interest in identity as something both constructed and in flux. Drawn to portraiture, they consider all such works a reflection of their being, particularly those in which they appear in costume or as a non-human entity. These explorations of selfhood parallel their broader engagement with mythology and worldmaking—processes through which individuals and cultures shape and reshape their own narratives over time.

Their scholarly and material investigations examine race, phenomenology, spirituality, mediating technology, Salvationism, worldmaking, and mythology—questioning how difference is erased in the construction of new realities. Sims is particularly interested in the obliteration of difference as both a utopian ideal and a historical mechanism of control, considering how meaning is sought, imposed, and reconstructed in contemporary culture.

Currently, Sims is developing a series of abstracted self-portraits—both painted on canvas and through video—rooted in the aesthetics of late Middle-Age Dutch painting. This body of work constructs a personal mythology informed by cultural anthropology and folklore, expanding their investigation into identity, transformation, and the tensions between history and futurity. By merging historical visual languages with speculative imagery, they aim to create work that both references and transcends time, evoking a world where past and future collapse into the present.