My art practice is concerned with the subjective nature of personal narrative and history and the examination of the fluidity and ambiguity of memory. Often employing coded visual languages and symbolic iconography, I am interested in the digital and analog manipulation of images, pushing optical limits past the point of legibility into abstraction and then back again. In this way, images vibrate between clarity and obfuscation, demonstrating the futility and interplay between fiction and nonfiction.
Recent work explores themes of invisibility, erasure, identity, and the immigrant experience. As an attempt to better understand my family’s history and my heritage, I am particularly interested in the visual expression of the tethered experience, in both life and death, that immigrants face as they seek to assimilate while also striving to maintain connections to their home cultures. The practice of geomancy – close observation and divination of the natural landscape for the selection of auspicious locations for burial, focusing on sites channeling vital energy – provide poignant metaphors for the continuous discovery of my own source of vital energy, which I hope will contribute to the perpetual formation and reformation of my malleable identity. Utilizing primarily photographic and print media, I seek a non-passive viewing experience to compel a questioning of material, space, and image by highlighting the shifting balance between what is real and what is imagined.