The DIY scene is built upon radical acceptance and radical resistance. Acceptance of all emotions, resistance against all inhibition. Acceptance of all people, resistance against all oppression. My series, The Scene, aims to highlight this dichotomy that creates the ethos of DIY. I utilize long exposures and flash photography to highlight the raw energy of the shows. In doing so, I hope to show all facets of this expansive community.
The “Identity” series delves into parts of the human identity; how the physical world defines us, how mentally we view ourselves or others, and how we explore personality, sexuality, and gender. “Positive Results” (blue and red) investigates how one may feel insecure in their environment. “Gifted Kid” (green and yellow) is a piece based off of gifted learning programs in elementary school, and how they breed severe burnout and perfectionism in students later in life. “I Wish I Were Perfect” (black, purple, and pink) is a piece modeled after an anonymous friend’s personal struggle with perfection. “Control” (pink, purple, orange, and green) is modeled off the idea that having more hands would make life easier; instead, the need for control becomes more intense. “Celestial Bodies” (blue, green, and pink) is an exploration of sapphic love through feminine bodies, both love for self and love for another.
Scrolling through social media on a daily basis, toxic media portraiture of beauty standards has inspired me for this mixed media painting. This piece depicts the conflicting multi-standards of beauty spanning in various cultures. The piece combines both western and eastern “perfect” beauty standards from early 80s to modern time. I utilize spraypaint and magazines collages to depict the beauty trends and digital representation of certain beautiful traits. Through this piece, I want to criticize the unrealistic and chaotic standards we face as global citizens. People start to ignore the truth inside of themselves which is the beauty we have already possessed. In the digital world, everything is judging on a surface level. People keep taking short snapshot or zoom in certain features on someone else on social media. People adjust certain feature of themselves and have an unconscious narrow mind of beauty. The mass media of society undoubtedly shape the value system of the public. I would like to show through this piece that each individual should embrace the inner beauty inside of themselves and face the messy truth of the media beauty.
This series emphatically insists on spectrums in a binary world. While I consciously know there isn’t anything wrong with being transgender—that there’s absolutely no shame in it, this knowledge hasn’t protected me from internalizing all the transphobic messages integrated into every aspect of our “progressive” society. Glittering glass slivers, they dig in deep, prepared to stay a lifetime. So I decided to sit with myself. Naked. In front of a mirror and canvas. I would paint my body until it became one grounded, plein-air-inspired stroke after another. Until I accepted that it’s a perfectly valid body. This journey isn’t mine alone. This series challenges viewers to address their own internalized transphobia. To ask themselves again, “What does it mean to be transgender?” or “What does a normal body even look like?” and most importantly “Maybe I should expand how I think about gender and sex.”
This body of work reflects on the two-dimensionality of visual art, specifically in the realm of illustration, painting, and digital art. The pieces address the increasingly strict guidelines imposed on the artistic community, what it means to be an artist, and how we define art. Furthermore, the body of work questions the temporality of visual art, specifically in a physical form. The work is very important to me as it illustrates much of my world view: people and places exist as different from one another, but have the ability and propensity to blend, interact, and harmonize.
The statistic that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted has been repeated over and over again. I wanted to create a piece that allowed women to react to their experience with sexual assault. Through the Red Tape Project at the University of Denver, as well as my own friends and family, I found a variety of women to participate in the piece. Some participants chose to do it together, while others made their creation in private. Each participant was given six cardboard squares. They were simply told to react to their experience using the squares. They could do anything they wanted to the squares, with the only requirement that at least one shred of cardboard was left. They could add things, build things, take things away, draw, write, paint, whatever they wanted. It was powerful to see the similarity of the women’s reactions. The piece is also interactive when it is displayed. Viewers can pick the pieces up and as each piece is put back down in a different spot, the individual experience becomes woven together.
I find that there are innate balances in life, universal dichotomies that permeate our understanding of the world. My paintings are about a duality such as this that exists between art and science. We are told from youth that these subjects are poles in constant strain, as miscible as oil in water. I spent thirteen years in school believing that I must choose between the two, that it is unnecessary to carry both with me. Drawn between a distinct love of each, I realized how vehemently I disagreed. Everything: every rock to every tree to every person is suspended between the two and therefore requires both to be fully understood.