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ARTIST STATEMENT

I live the majority of my life in a state of nostalgia. Nostalgia has manifested as the romanticization of trauma for me, I definitely like to think that drinking sidewalk slams (4 Loko + malt liquor 40 oz) and making out with a lot of dumb Oakland boys was a poetic thing. I make 2D, installation, and video work to put my thinking cap on and figure out what my memories really are. I love cartoons, especially Gumby because he is malleable and can shapeshift. I feel like that sometimes. I hope to be more like Gumby. I work in installation, painting and video to make art that feels like the uncanniness of the “Gumby and Pokey” cartoons- familiar/comforting and gross/unfamiliar at the same time.

I am interested in the connection between the uncanny and adolescence: the time period when the tension between the uncomfortable and familiar peaks. Teenagers are simultaneously repressed and empowered, constantly in a state of discovery. Their way of perceiving is in an aesthetic (rather than anaesthetic) mode. This is the thing I loved about adolescence and I translate that attitude in my work. I am interested in the nostalgia as the transformation of memory and how it melts, grows, and becomes shinier as time goes on. This transformation of memory from traumatic to glamorized is a method of coping that I try to undo in my work. I combine the imagery of cartoons from my childhood, sexual themes, and archives from my adolescence, creating tension between romance and trauma in a way that communicates the connection between uncanny and nostalgia.

I employ projection, additive, and reductive processes to portray fantasy in terms of the body. The femme body is often fantasized for other people, but by abstracting and projecting I can control what is being imagined and played out in an internal way, concealing and projecting what I want. By using my own body to explore the overlap between violence and intimacy in literal mark-making, such as tattooing and projection, I can reclaim my space and body in an ongoing project to reorient myself. I also create spaces through an installation that memorialize my own adolescent past with colorful and sometimes disturbing mural work.