Ether and Agony

Opening Reception: Oct 8, 6-10pm
Daily hours: Sat and Sun 12-5, Tuesday-Friday 12-5 call ahead

RAP CULTURE, FEMINISM, CRAFT, PATHOLOGY, IDENTITY, FETISH, ABNORMALITY, RACE, SEXUALITY, BEAUTY, ANATOMY, CULTURAL VALUE, AND PERSONAL NARRATIVE. These themes penetrate my artistic practice, collaging into visual depictions of a life that is my own. In sculpture, video, and performance, I reconfigure my perverse observations as a black, Christian, female artist into new, uncanny experiences. The work is raw. The work is twisted. The work is visually combative, challenging the viewer to confront it and me. Conflating difficult materials into compositions that contest established standards of normativity and desirability, I challenge pervasive social conventions, orchestrating comfortability and uncomfortability within the viewing psyche. Whether in stationary works or live actions, my materials also represent a potential translation between contrasting perspectives that we—the viewer, and myself the creator—can use to communicate. Appealing qualities of light and reflectivity for example, are implied through glass, saliva, mirror, wet specimens, glitter, discharge, and Swarovski crystals. These materials secrete and circulate throughout my work­space, thought process, and forms of public address. BANDANAS, STUFFED CONDOMS, PEARLS, CHAINS, HAIR WEAVE, BEADS, DENTURE ­REJECTED TEETH, PAINT, LATEX, MASTERBATORY GRADE SILICONE, COSTUME JEWELRY, CRYSTALS, GLASS EYES, ZIT­COLORED CABOCHONS, and TAMPONS. These materials populate the interior and exterior surfaces of my sculptural objects—blown ultra­thin glass membranes, fragile visceral tissues resembling tumor forms. Combining elements of the grotesque and the beautiful, the hot glass forms are bulbous, seeping, colorful, transparent, and organic. Embalmed with charged materials occupying their negative space, they are also adorned on the outside to resemble medical images of cancerous phenomena, tissue irregularity, and cellular malignancies—visual obstacles for the viewer to renegotiate against their standards of attraction. As a child, my younger sister had a massive stroke, acquiring physical disabilities and an alternative facial structure that pulled her cheeks, mouth, and ocular muscles aggressively off center. Alongside her, I battled negative attention from the public, knowing the beautiful, glowing, and gentle person that she was beneath that distorted surface.