artist statement
My work centers nature, identity, and the human form through intersecting themes of embodiment, devotion, feminine archetypes. My recent series focus on the performance of rituals such as altar-making, bathing, or the embodiment of feminine motifs in Western art history.
My practice is guided by this quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes: “While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving.”
Below are samples from three photography series and a performance:
Body as Altar Series
“The Same Divine Stuff As You” is an ongoing participatory performance series exploring the body as altar. Inspired by a teaching in “The Radiance Sutras,” a text that describes 112 different doorways into meditation, the project aims to turn the idea of ritual devotion toward the self. Participants select a part of their body that they wish to celebrate or soften their relationship with, and adorn it with flowers, shells, emblems, and other offerings.
Late Summer Roses, Jino, 2024
Late Summer Roses, Jino 2, 2024
Prayer Legs, Helen, 2022
Adornment, Jovana, 2023
It's Lonely Being a Goddess, Mary Rubi, 2023
Offering, Graciela, 2023
Healing from Surgery, Brigitta
“Oh, Cassandra” Trailer for a performance on Governor’s Island in 2023
“Oh, Cassandra” tells the story of the day the ocean currents stop. Through a reinterpretation of the Greek myth, Cassandra, a world full of million-dollar medical appointments, divorce announcements, dancing mania, and more is presented.
Venus d’Estradiol
This series is an intimate documentation of the eve of my friend’s egg retrieval procedure. After injecting her stomach with estrogen (a shot called “depo estradiol”) for just under two weeks, a constellation of bruises formed a crescent moon around her lower belly. In photographing the bruises and curvature of her stomach for posterity, I was reminded of Venus fertility figures; in particular, the Venus de Milo. My roommate’s bruised torso personified for me not only a modern and empowered version of the timeless fertility figure, but also the unseen and ongoing sacrifices one makes to become a parent. The work uses the archetype of Venus, goddess of beauty, fertility, and love, to cast the IVF journey in an empowered and ethereal light, pushing against the taboos around conceiving beyond a person’s twenties.
Scales of Reproductive Justice (Portrait of Libby's Bruised Torso), 2021
The Bathers
The classical western Bathers genre of painting, established over hundreds of years, heavily featured nude, white, unblemished, surprised or unaware women lounging in idyllic landscapes or bath houses, voyeuristically captured by male artists. I began this series in May 2020 as a response to the historical genre, as well as a way to establish a connection with the earth in solidarity from inside my apartment in quarantine. The series developed into a raw documentation of myself and friends performing various earth-based cleansing, or bathing rituals.
Forest Bathers (Shinrin-Yoku), 2021, Photograph taken in collaboration with Maya Jackson
Sun (Flower) Bathers (Portrait of Jasmine Hayden and Jess Angima), 2021
The Ocean Bather, 2020, Drone shot taken by Roberto Castellano
Green Bathers in Quarantine, 2020, Photograph taken in collaboration with Heloise Paugam