ARTIST STATEMENT:

My work explores the intersection between the organic and the constructed, and the familiar and the abstract, offering a critical intervention into international politics through visual language. I am fascinated by the ways in which identity, emotion, and memory can be conveyed through the manipulation of form, color, and texture. By revealing the fluidity of boundaries—inscribed as natural—I question their arbitrariness and instability.  

Collage is central to this inquiry. It is a methodology that disrupts linear meaning-making, forging relationships between disparate parts through gaps, holes, layering, and lapsing of meaning. By placing shape next to shape and color against color, I create relationships that unsettle exclusionary systems of clarity and cohesion. I am queering both the intimate and the international—physically disrupting state boundaries and exposing where one body, state, or society ends and another begins. This process is tactile, crafted, and visceral, bridging the spiritual and political. For me, the bridge is built from the erotic—a force of intuition, sensuality, and emotional expression that connects the deepest parts of myself to external systems of power and representation.

The human figure recurs throughout my work, fragmented yet whole, existing in ambiguous spaces. These figures reflect the complexities of navigating identity and corporeality in a disjointed, layered world. Color plays a pivotal role here. I use bold, vibrant hues alongside subdued, earthy tones to evoke emotion, build narrative, and create tension between organic and geometric forms. My use of color not only guides the viewer’s eye but complicates their understanding of balance, structure, and discord.

Materiality further drives my practice. The checkered pattern emerges repeatedly as a literal and symbolic representation of binaries—good versus bad, order versus chaos. Yet, even within its structure, there is an interconnected balance. What happens when this imposed order begins to unravel? Using abstraction and collage, I unsettle these binaries and embrace fluidity. Similarly, textiles serve as both medium and subject through which I reclaim notions of craft and domesticity, transforming these materials into sites of resistance and new cultural meaning. Painting feminine figures into existence allows me to redirect narratives that exclude, objectify, or diminish their agency. 

Ultimately, my work exists in the interplay between the personal and political, the constructed and the organic, the intimate and the collective. It is a space where discovery happens for myself and the viewer—where binaries blur, meaning lapses, and new understandings emerge. My senior thesis is a catalyst to this critical inquiry into selfhood and human flourishing; The Plexus: a site where divided nerves, blood, and vessels come together—an interwoven system of connection. In the representative works of my portfolio, fragmented forms inhabit ambiguous spaces, disrupted by layers of texture, color, and material. A checkered grid fractures one composition, questioning notions of control and chaos. In another, textiles and paint intertwine, dissolving the boundaries between medium, body, and identity.