Statement

To be human is a relational, not isolated condition. Life on Earth originated in ancient oceans, brought forth from the organic broth of primordial soup. From a universal common ancestor, life diversified. The existence and evolution of all living organisms is fundamentally shaped by their complex relationships to other organisms and their environment. Through the perspective of deep time and phylogenetics, humans are modified fish. This demonstrates that our deepest categories of body and self are not fixed, but fluid; our existence is one of perpetual becoming. How do we navigate these realities while living in an unprecedented ecocide?

The Plantationocene – a concept that links our present ecological crisis to the global spread of colonial plantation systems – has dramatically reordered our biophysical material world. Mass extinction, invasive species, transgenic organisms, and the increasingly mechanized extraction of nonhuman bodies are a continuation of these systems. Our prevailing biopolitical logic – how we govern life – has begun to falter, opening up possibilities that confront us. How do emerging and vanishing multi-species relationships influence our understanding of self?     

My work challenges what we consider to be beautiful, perverse, and sensuous in our changing world. These assumptions are questioned through an expansive material approach that includes fish leather, gelatin bioplastics, textile, and steel. These materials are manipulated to create imaginative forms that resemble sumptuous garments, biological specimens, and machines. My practice centers material as a critical point of analysis, asserting that they are active agents in the art-making process through the inherent properties they possess. My bodily sculptures invite us to experience attraction and aversion, as well as curiosity, kinship, and otherness; they invite us to search for a more profound understanding of ourselves and what we may become.