Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.
STATEMENT OF WORK
I am a multimedia artist working with natural materials and elemental processes to explore the porous boundary between humanity and nature. My practice is autoethnographic and rooted in all that is trans: transsexual, transformative, transitional, trans-national and transitory. I challenge the pathologizing and demonizing of queer and trans bodies by drawing attention to the inherent transness of our natural world.
Controlled Burn is a series of paintings and drawings made with soil, water, and fire through the burning of palo de ocote (pinewood). The controlled burn serves as a metaphor for the various actions we take that may, from an outside perspective, initially seem harmful when in reality, these actions serve as a means of preserving ourselves and our futures. My subjects include transexual bodies (specifically transsexual, as a signification of medical/surgical transitioning), community uprisings, and controlled burns of landscapes. I use these natural elements not only as a sustainable practice of art-making but also as a spiritual, ritual practice of art-making. In each image, the act of destruction inevitably leads to creation, self-realization, protection, hope, and abundance.
Amalgamations is a series of sculptures made of a mixture of wood, stone, clay, and animal bones. These works are stand-ins for queer and trans bodies; while completely natural, the materials that make up each piece are obscured by paint or gel stain, rendering them illegible.
KROPP/BODY/CUERPO is a photographic series of site-specific land art. Inspired by Ana Mendieta’s ‘siluetas’ series, I began creating my own silhouettes using natural materials in Nevelsfjord, Northern Norway, where my grandfather and his father were born. Through this work, I explore how my body relates to the landscape that my family has resided on and with since the 1800s. This series of photographs makes visible our ephemerality and insists that we see ourselves in the landscape.
Through these ongoing series, I aim to trouble the idea that transness is uniquely or solely human. Instead, I frame it as a dynamic, generative truth that exists throughout the natural world: transness is not limited to the human body.