In my multidisciplinary practice, I create sculpture, video, and installations to initiate conversations about agency within invisible systems of power. As an artist with physical disabilities of my hands (Ectrodactyly Ectodermal Dysplasia), I am interested in exploring broader definitions of agency. The work often critically engages technology and the found object, inviting viewers to watch, read, or listen to narratives that guide them to question the performativity of everyday life in technologically mediated society, value production, and how agency operates within larger systems of power. I approach the orchestration of this viewership by drawing on theoretical and philosophical research, feminist and disability politics, comedy, and conceptualism.
I employ recursive framing techniques both to encourage the viewer to consider the work through a specific lens and to demonstrate the productive quality of meaning as a mechanism of resistance against relinquishing one’s autonomy to these pervasive systems. An example of this is the installation “Untitled (Untitled I Can’t Trust the Universe)” where the wall painting frames the couch that in turn serve as a frame for embroidered pillows or kinetic sculptures.
Aspects of humor in my art provide both an entryway for viewers as well as a challenge for viewers to reassess their perceptions. I am interested in presenting elements with an ‘air’ of fact: utilizing deadpan humor techniques to destabilize the viewer’s understanding of what they are witnessing. In doing so, the viewer (left without answers) is encouraged to create their own meaning.
