Dust & Light
Drawing in charcoal for screen print
My experience with gender dysphoria has given me a firsthand experience of the incongruous relationship between subject and representation as executed through human-made systems for undersatanding reality. Celestial bodies have historically been victims of this clumsiness. Geocentrism, the illusion of dead stars still shining, and the name “shooting star,” which refers to something that is, in fact, not a star at all- these are just a few examples of human-made systems misrepresenting reality on a cosmic scale. This project occupies the space between the concrete and the conceptual. First drawn in charcoal, each image is made of dust- they are tactile; physical. They are then rendered through light, burned into a screen via the ultraviolet spectrum- imperceptible to the human eye- before being printed onto paper once more in ink. They are transformed through the process of representation.
Their Charcoal Counterparts
Through my art practice, I explore intersections among identity, representation, sensory perception, and culture. Working primarily between charcoal and screen printing, I am a passionate proponent of hybridity, mixing media to achieve a final product. As a fanatic for medium and message relationships, my use of mixed media often reinforces the content of my work, which interrogates systems of rigid categorization, asks who implements them and who benefits from them, and suggests an openness to other ways of seeing. I believe that the process is the art itself, that myself the artist is merely a participant in the creative act and the art a record of it. Through my work, I hope to give viewers a window into that process where deep, nuanced connections are made- to consider how the making of the work informs the meaning.