visual artist based in chicago, illinois
MFA candidate in visual arts at the university of chicago
graduated in may 2024 from the university of illinois, urbana-champaign with a BA in studio art with a concentration in photography, & minors in art history, east asian languages & cultures, & business
the best way to get in touch with me is to send an email to the following address:
or, stalk me on social media:
artist statement
As a rejection to the rising trend of fabricating images using AI, especially in the fine art world, I create work that cannot be quickly or identically reproduced, reminding the viewer of the human hand that created it. There is an increasingly common belief that our individual consumption has no real effect in the world and thus, if we change our habits, nothing changes with them. My opposition to this line of thinking manifests in the themes of my images and how I interrupt the standard approach to creating a physical photograph, using sewing and solar printing to slow the process and embrace imperfections. My projects are born from my interests in pop culture, the working class, vulnerability, insecurity, confrontation, and the workings of relationships. I make the base assumption that people are curious to see the private details of the lives of others, and that in seeing those details people can make connections between the vulnerability of the photographed individuals with the intricacies of their own lives. I create photos with those closest to me, strangers, or myself. I confront my physical insecurities through self-portraiture and my mental/artistic insecurities through questioning my interest in the themes of a project. Why am I making this? And for whom?
I am particularly interested in the physical manifestation of my digital and analog photographs and the rooms they inhabit. I create site-specific installations that integrate experimentations with physical collage, disturbances of the two-dimensional photographic plane, wall and frame color, and audio. Music, spoken-word recordings, and sound collages can provide calm or discomfort, both of which can be equally valuable in how they alter the meaning of the images that share the space. For the exhibition of Rate Your Pain, a project that discussed extreme horror/thriller movies, I utilized songs from each film’s soundtrack and archival recordings of moviegoers’ intense immediate reactions to the debut of Irreversible at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. For Maybe You Should Expect Less From Me, an exhibition focused on my relationships and the stress of creating art under time restrictions, a short film played on constant loop which was sonically comprised of subdued audio recordings of my voice and audio that accompanied video clips shot over a two-year period. For Step on Me, my thesis project, I incorporated an interactive element to the audio, giving viewers the ability to play/pause songs which matched the visual loudness of the images from a reactive interface on an iPad.
I stress the importance of consciously drawing from one’s own experiences and artistic influences, ideas that cannot be traced when creating images using AI. I am influenced by lens-based artists who intertwine references to photography as an artistic and exploitative medium with questions of how pop culture is created and consumed, namely Sara Cwynar. I also draw inspiration from self-portrait photographers who use the human body as a form that can be bent into uncanny shapes and positions that relate visually to something other than itself, particularly Pixy Liao. The colors, shapes, and themes that these artists approach have worked their way into my own images and collages, mixed with my own experiences and tastes. In the future, I plan to continue exploring themes of consumerism and vulnerability, the physical interruptions that can be applied to printed images, the materials images can be printed on, and the sonic capability of abrasive audio paired with abrasive imagery.