Works on View

Never Let Me Go, 2020. Six inkjet archival prints, 17”x22”

1. Untitled #1 (Ashvini)

2. Untitled #2 (Amy)

3. Untitled #3 (Elias)

4. Untitled #4 (Sid)

5. Untitled #5 (Lexi)

6. Untitled #6 (Clare)

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Artist Statement: I think about people before thinking about art. I think about people always. I want their approval. I want to be the world’s best friend. I want them to feel a fraction of the joy they make me feel. I care what they think. My art is consistently concerned with those around me. When I photograph, I carefully construct spaces and characters. I project my psyche onto my subject, theirs onto mine. Through rendering those close to me, my twin sister, childhood friends, roommates, myself. I work to capture my subjects both as they are and as they want to be. I seek to display their changing personalities in different settings, resisting the notion of having a “true self.” My subjects exist as a multitude of dichotomous identities lively and bored, feminine and powerful, mysterious and plain. In my art, I want to disrupt photography’s intimate connection with capitalism through illustrating the impossibility of individualism.

Works on View

1. Zone 1, 2020. Paper, wood, cloth, paint, string, approx. 12’x11’x6”

2. Fish Revenge, 2020. Graphite pencil, paper, pins, 17"x24"

3. Untitled, 2020. Graphite pencil, paper, 24"17"

Artist Statement: In the past year my art interests have come to center on broad frameworks of ‘networks and systems,’ what I consider a horizontal approach to thinking which creates organization through interconnection. Here I use those terms interchangeably (perhaps erroneously so) because I have yet to distinguish significance in meaning between them in my own work. To this end, I am interested in both reimagining given networks and systems–cities, social circles, food chains–and also proposing new, unknown ones. I have found the network and systems framework a useful channel for some of my primary art-related impulses: to collect, catalogue, and eventually rearrange material. The network proposes continuous connection and a dialogue between separate parts, which ultimately contributes to a holistic vision. Thus, I can connect my many disparate interests, from history to anthropology to the built environment and of course, art. As of late I have taken the grid to be my primary ordering structure in my systems and networks, used for both figures and spaces alike. The grid creates immediate order whenever it is applied, and in doing so suggests many things–structure, plan, equality, control, power, perhaps oppression. In my latest work I have been interested in playing with the integrity of the grid itself, and how figures inhabit such highly ordered but ultimately abstract spaces–how does a grid break, and what does that mean? What lies beyond those hatched lines, and who made these grids anyhow? Finally, within my created systems, I have been working to develop a personal iconography and a core body of images, which have become increasingly self-referential across different works. I am continuing to develop larger relationships between my pieces, perhaps each actually a node of a much larger network.

Along with the network/system framework, I have also come to start thinking of my work in terms of models, sketches, and proposals. I find the ‘model’ conceptually useful, because it implies the work is in process and its form a mutable proposal. Perhaps even more important, the model framework suggests negotiable scale. The artwork then becomes an open-ended proposition for an object, a space, a structure, or perhaps all of them simultaneously. Scale is also an important internal component in my work. I am interested in using scale (sometimes properly, sometimes disjointedly) as a way to reorient both my perspective and that of the viewer, and in doing so renegotiate the primary relationships between my figures (objects, entities) and the proposed space. 

Finally, I have come to find humor to be an important part of my process and often a palpable element in the final product. For me, humor usually emerges through juxtapositions of form or content (and sometimes both simultaneously) and comes as another bearing of my moves to renegotiate spatial and figural relationships. Humor then is sometimes the intent of a particular choice, but rarely the goal of an entire work. To that end, the humor in my practice is always ultimately for me (I have been told my work isn’t very funny)–it lubricates my working process and brings some cheek to otherwise serious propositions. 

Works on View

1. Hide and Seek, 2020. Oil on canvas, 22”x28”

2. City Limits, 2020. Oil on canvas, 22”x28”

3. Resisting the Wind, 2020. Oil on canvas, 48”x36”

4. Grendel, 2020. Oil on canvas, 30”x40”

5. Mama, 2020. Bass wood, 13”x5”x4”

6. Arachne Under the Egg Tree, 2019. Pen on paper, 9.75”x7.75”

7. IM ALL THE FISHES IN THE SEA!, 2019. Ballpoint pen, oil pastel, and colored pencil on paper, 9.75”x7.75”

8. Arachne’s Migraine, 2020. Pen on paper, 8.5”x5.5”

Artist Statement: Every day I push the boulder up the mountain and wait for something of epic proportions to interrupt my routine. On the way up I plan to touch the sun. On the way down I consider sinking into the ocean. I tell myself stories along the way: once upon a time there was an enormous antagonist, wild with apathy, crying out for his mother. I convince myself that my mossless stone stands in for a certain witness until it occurs to me that the force compelling me upward also compels every other creature that walks the earth. I hang my hat on the corner of the sky, and nothing suspends me.

Website | Instagram

Works on View

After-Effects (series), 2020. Digital photography, manipulated with Photoshop, 24mmx 36mm

1. Would you keep me if you could?

2. With a View

3. The Places I Was, the Places I Wasn’t, the Beginning, and the End

4. Tunnel Vision

5. Self-Contained

6. Release

7. Finish Strong

8. Sought

9. Shower

10. Newfound Appreciation

11. Poisoning Comforts

12. Nesting

13. False Fruits and Empty Words

14. It hardly seems so far at all

15. Kinda stressed but I’m doing ok

16. Looking In

17. Be in the Where You’re at

18. Contained and Confined

19. You were not the same after that

20. I can’t seem to find it here

21. I wish I couldn’t miss you

22. Just Peachy

23. Reflecting/Reflection

24. Faire

25. Growing Up

26. Feels Like Home

27. Fallout

28. In the right headspace

29. How can it be spring already

30. Misplaced Trust in Self or The Ripple Effect

31. Looking at you feels different somehow

32. A Journey North or For Once to be Loved

33. Promises, Promises

24. This isn’t the last one, but it could be

Enamel (series), 2020. Acrylic, oil paint, paper, palette paper, fabric, embroidery floss, wooden hoop. Large: 30”x 22.5”; medium: 11”x 14”; small: 6”x9” & 9”x6”; oil sketch: 14”x17”; embroidery: 5.5”

Untitled (Reynolds), 2020. 7.75”x9.5”

Untitled (Flowers), 7.5”x10”

Untitled (Logan), 7.5”x10”

Website

Artist Statement:

What is an artist statement?

What purpose does it serve?

Does it benefit the work?

Does it serve as a primer for the viewer? (YES)

Should the viewer be primed?

Does the artist statement interfere with the work?

…with the viewer’s ability to project onto it and form a unique perspective?

If a body of work requires an artist statement to make sense and be legible, it is not effective as a body of work.

Why and how did artist statements become the norm?

Should they continue to be the norm?

By participating in the writing of an artist statement, is one proliferating the culture that demands them?

Who is the artist statement for?

…the viewer?

…the artist?

…the work itself?

Are artist statements meant to encompass the entire body of an artist’s work?

Are they restrictive to the growth or change of an artist’s work?

Do the statements themselves change over time?

How many artist statements should an artist have?

One? Many? None?

When is it appropriate for an artist to write an artist statement?

Can I even consider myself an artist?

Why do artists write artist statements?

Do they like it?

I don’t.

I do art so that I don’t have to write in order to communicate my thoughts.

Isn’t that the whole point?

…that artists don’t need words to express ideas?

I don’t have any performative desires. That’s not me.

That’s why I make art.

Is this an artist statement?

Does it fulfill the requirements?

Does it benefit my work?

Maybe not.

…and that’s okay.

I don’t title my work. I don’t make statements on my work.

I work.

…and I make work.­

I make art.

Works on View

1. Trentepohlia—Trebouxia, 2020. 4 archival inkjet prints, acrylic, tar gel, and lichen on branch, 34”x44”x42'

2. Trappings of a Small Mind, 2020. Wax, archival inkjet print, plywood, 14”x20”x16”

3. Take Away the Hand that Feeds, 2020. Saltwater tank, sea urchin spines, plastic aquarium decoration, 16.2”x8.4”x10.9”

4. Practice for a Future Memorial, 2019. Archival inkjet print, leaf ash, indigo dye, 8”x10”

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Artist Statement: In a time where human failure is no longer a question, but an imminent certainty, I use my practice to grapple with questions of ecological loss. What does it mean to accept a death that we have yet to see fully realized in the world? What space do we currently occupy, waiting and yet still destroying? Primarily through analogous relationships, I try to grant viewers an understanding of our own yearnings. Often interceding with my own renderings of the sublime, my work utilizes scale, distance, and textural plasticity to open up an experiential moment for the viewer. Confronting an object in space, I intend viewers to ask themselves what is at loss and what we so desire.

My interest in the potentiality of life forms to resist or be subject to devastation prompts investigation into different material starting points. Taking wax, plasticy tar gel, and decrepit living forms as origins, I explore their physicality to alter our perception of materials in their environments. Driven by a sense of care and respect for the materials in my hand, I question my precarious feelings towards these substances, examining the varying processes of equalizing, deferring to, or exerting control over my materials.

I aim to indulge in emptiness: ultimately using it, and thus loss itself, as a key medium. A small box floating in the corner, a nearly imperceptible shift in a found branch to an artifice–my work projects a quiet, affective tone that sits patiently and lets the space remain void.

Works on View

1. Fragments, 2020. Archival inkjet prints, 17"x22"

2. Fragments, 2020. Archival inkjet prints, 17"x22"

3. Fragments, 2020. Archival inkjet prints, 17"x22"

4. Walking: (Hyde Park), (in progress), 2019-2020. Two-channel sound recording and graphite, charcoal, watercolor pencil, and pen on duralar paper, 8"x11"

5. Walking: (Hyde Park), (in progress), 2019-2020. Two-channel sound recording and graphite, charcoal, watercolor pencil, and pen on duralar paper, 8"x11"

Artist Statement: I enjoy experimenting with a variety of media such as paint, graphite, video, and sound to create works with genuine narratives that grapple with the multi-faceted nature of self-identity. The art-making I engage in is an exploration of my own identity and the socio-political world with which I interact. For the BA thesis exhibition, I’ve chosen to explore the themes of fading memories and internalized racism. While these themes are disparate, I believe they both play a significant role in the construction of identities.

Memories of past experiences, and the nostalgia or distaste we might have for them, play a role in how we perceive ourselves in the present. However, as we move forward in time away from actual experiences, the memories warp, and fragment. I’m interested in the disconnect this creates between the past self and the present self.

I am also interested in the specific internalized racism prevalent in the South Asian community, which has both fueled and been fueled by the fairness cream industry. I hope to continue to explore the everyday nature of the trauma associated with colonialism, immigration, and internalized racism, and how it complicates the select privileges of being South Asian in America.

Works on View

1. Detail of Sheltered, 2020. Digital Photography, Painted on with Oil Paint, 17"x22"

2. Detail of Sheltered, 2020. Digital Photography, Painted on with Oil Paint, 17"x22"

3. Sheltered, 2020. Digital Photography, Painted on with Oil Paint, 17"x22"

4. Detail of Untitled, 2020. Digital painting, drawn on Procreate, printed on canvas paper, 36"x48"

5. Untitled, 2020. Digital painting, drawn on Procreate, printed on canvas paper, 36"x48" 

6. Detail of Rara, 2020. Acrylic paint, glue, tissue paper, 24"x48"; 30"x48"; 36"x48"

7. Detail of Rara, 2020. Acrylic paint, glue, tissue paper, 24"x48"; 30"x48"; 36"x48"

8. Rara, 2020. Acrylic paint, glue, tissue paper, 24"x48"; 30"x48"; 36"x48"

Artist Statement: 

My work… Why do I like to create it? There is an overlap between abstraction and representation I have always found difficult to find, but fantastic when accomplished. 

The materials used in Rara speak to unpredictability, while keeping some degree of control over the outcome. I can control where the pustules go, but not the directions of the ridges on it. I can control the height of the bumps, but not the way the paint dries on them. Rara is the line between abstraction and representation that has always intrigued me, and the combination of unlikely materials only makes that line thicker. 

Sheltered, while less clear, also sits on the line. There is obvious representation, but also a hint of abstraction. The intimate images tainted with glossy paint is not unpredictable, but the way the paper behaved after certain forms of treatment is. The oddness of the patterns forces a vigorous stare, one that would not have occurred with simple, private scenes. 

Lastly,  Untitled sits on the representation side of the line - for the purpose is to cause an unsettling emotion with a familiar yet undesired scene. What happens when everyday is the same is different across individuals, this one is just my representation. Bounded by the use of a single material adds to the feeling of constraint in my everyday routine.

I cannot explain further the what, the how or the why, I can only explain the unfamiliarity I feel with every work I create. I do not wish for people to look at my work and say “I can tell it’s hers”. The ability to disconnect with the particular style I am known for is the skill I desire, for how can I improve if I am not willing to break the barrier of my own comfort?

My art is the advance from one boundary to the next. Every new piece I focus on what I have done well before, what I have done and must improve, and most importantly, what I have not yet done. And once it is over, I am confident in saying I have inched a little closer to self discovery as an artist, and climbed over that barrier just to find a larger one right in front of me.

Works on View

1. Tread through snow to put on the wall, 2020. Oil and oil pastel on canvas, 20"x24"

2. Puzzle of, 2020. Oil, charcoal, oil pastel and paint skin on unstretched canvas, 64"x72"

3. A specific moment in the morning, 2020. Oil and oil pastel on canvas, 40"x30"

4. I do care but do I actually care?, 2020. Oil and collage on canvas, 36"x48"

Instagram

Artist Statement: Engaging both sensorial experiences of physical space and memories of mental space, my work examines what it means to inhabit a woman’s body–a moving and thinking body. To me, possessing a corporeal body, leaving indexical marks in the fleeting moments and tracing how body moves in time and space is intimate and empowering. Taking a phenomenological approach, I use my body to experience, address the significance of things in consciousness, and embody emotion and imagination. In turn, I am interested in how my body’s presence, absence, placement, displacement, and relationship with other entities mold my existence in space.

After rereading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own recently, I have been dwelling on the necessity of a literal and figurative space for women creatives to make work and construct their own artistic history. I began to rethink what it means to have a “room,” a bounded space, for my creative impulses concerning the phenomenological experience of my body–an Asian woman’s body of intersectionality. My concern with the “room” and my body is multilayered. I explore both the physical and metaphorical rooms–my studio or creative built environment around me, the body as a room defined by its interiority and exteriority, and memory as an infinite room with its regenerative and reconstructive potentials. My paintings also enable me to meditate on and exteriorize the authenticity and performativity of my experience, which is inextricably linked to social categorizations of gender and sexuality. Noticing how I position and perform through my body, I paint myself, both the physical and the emotional, in these material and psychological spaces, inviting an embodied phenomenological experience. Questioning the dynamic between private memory and public experience, I desire to address and reimagine a literal and figurative “feminine” space for unbounded creation to locate my body.

Works on View

1. Rubber One Piece, 2020. Gum rubber, felt wool, staples, 24"x32.5"

2. Wool Bikini, 2020. Wool felt, thread, 24"x32.5"

3. Leather Lingerie, 2020. Brown leather, snakeskin leather, wool, thread, staples, latex rubber, found shoe, 27"x42"

4. Boots, 2020. Video, 2:49min. Watch Video

Website

Artist Statement: These pieces reflect my ongoing interest in costume and the performative act of “dressing up.” Exploring the world of swim and lingerie—clothing that is perhaps most intimate with the human form, and, when unworn, whose negative space essentially traces out the body that inhabits it—and using unconventional materials, such as industrial rubber, wool felt, and leather–materials that would be either entirely nonfunctional or at least uncomfortable in these roles–I aim to create strange, otherworldly pieces, blurring the line between sexy and bizarre (does it exist?). Placed over bold, felted colors, these delicates evoke the body and the figurative, but abstract it through the use of nonsense materials, and point to an understanding (or non-understanding) behind what we put between our skin and the outside world, what is supposed to expose us and what is supposed to protect us. The video Boots is a study into the music tv programs of the 1960s and 70s, the staged aesthetic of the shows, the colorful costumes and sets, paired with a live audience—all combining to create an eerie destabilization of reality. Multiplying myself three times, I set up my own girl group, and imitated the Nancy Sinatra music video for her song These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, lip-syncing on top of a flattened background of pages turning in a book. Installed on loop and, depending on the space and time, either projected to be human-size or installed miniscule on a monitor, the video is a funny and hypnotic attempt to become one of these “singing heads.”