ARTIST STATEMENT

“Identification is invariably a fantasy within a fantasy, a double figuration” - Judith Butler

Dualism, defined as the conceptual division of something into two contrasted aspects is a way to interpret vision/seeing as well as notions around the body/the self and which is the current focus of my research and artistic practice. I have been attempting to deconstruct the familiar and the old and then reconstruct an abstracted representation of the current. In a meditative-like manner I deconstruct ways of seeing and being by dividing them into opposing elements such as fantasy/reality, beautiful/grotesque, unfamiliar/ familiar. It is a conceptual culmination of childhood fantasies about a future adult self, combined with negative, unrealistic views on femininity, to current meditations on body/self. It is an attempt to fold past time into current space, one that embodies a dualistic vision and is experienced as a separation of self/self vision, self/knowledge of self. It involves both the mind and body and words like then and now, was and is. It is a struggle between vision and understanding.

I work intensely with dolls and ceramic figurines as they typically symbolize the definition of perfection, and I understand the emotional weight that attempting perfection in both a physical and mental body can have. Created with an ideal figure in mind, they are stylized representations of animals, people, places, and things (real or imaginary). They are inherently pleasing to the eye, they possess no unnecessary details, there are no imperfections, no wrinkles, no unwanted bumps, lumps or hairs. Through dismantling the bodies of dolls and ceramic figures and then recasting and reassembling the body with parts past, present, idealized, metaphysical, fantastical, and grotesque, I am reconstructing a body/self in present time while abandoning old theories around image, identity, and femininity.