Artist Statement
My work is about protection, specifically protecting the self. The processes of using non-verbal communication, like exchanging shared cultural, historical, and familial cues and ideas, for the purpose of belonging and security. With clothing and gesture, we hone an image to present to the social world. We signal authority or meekness, we grant or refuse permission, and we accept or reject. Communicating “correctly” relies entirely on understanding societal rules, which can change depending on context (who is in or out of power, what social class one straddles, the current social framework, etc).
I’m interested in the way we define ourselves by projecting our crafted identities into public spaces. How this is intertwined with old and oppressive systems. The systems endure and replicate through collective practices and rituals, which display themselves through status markers or other universal means of conveying self-image, aesthetics, interpersonal allegiance, citizenship, lineage, social status, etc. We deploy such things to protect ourselves and preserve our identities, and these same markers ‘use’ us to perpetuate social hierarchies and to protect whatever systems they are born of.