← Return to Colossal Wait: 2022 Senior Art Exhibition
I create narratives in an imagined world dominated by hedonistic celebration. Set during and after the biblical rapture, the scenes presented in my work fantasize about the dissipation of the dominant forces of heteronormativity and evangelism. Injecting the characters living in this godless world with my own queer perspective, I question the possibility of true freedom. What might be lost if it is achieved? The intentionally crowded, maximalist compositions, featuring excessive colors, forms, and scribbled lines, are an anxious attempt to illustrate every possible answer to that question. This anxiety is further emphasized through competing imagery of glittery rainbows and fiery explosions splattered throughout these scenes. I choose to present these narratives through cylindrical, ceramic vessels and complicated, water-based monoprints to provide the viewer with both bird’s-eye views and close-up details of these stories. The never-ending, circular storytelling capabilities of the vessels reflect the eternal nature of heaven and hell, while the flat works borrow from and subvert the iconography of religious illustrated manuscripts. The two work together to create this candy-colored hell-scape that, much like my own relationship to these ideas, is continually expanding and evolving.