Painting, Drawing and Mixed Media
Spring 2016-Fall 2017
Self/Other
36" X 80" 2017 Acrylic and urethane paint, pumice, water-swellable clay, colored pencil, and graphite on paper This painting portrays the self/other ideology as a dualistic structure that artificially imposes boundaries between those considered “other” and those at the top of the hierarchy. Multiple hands and a skeletal body create the central figure that is self-isolated from the patterned figures that make up the outside world. This visual narrative articulates the way nationalism, racism, sexism, and speciesism (human prejudice against other animals) defensively create barriers between the defined self—white, male, American born, and human— and the other. With the central emaciated body as an embodiment of this concept, I evoke malnourishment as a symbol of the need for sustenance from the outside. Contrasting the deadened color of the central figure, the cow, pig, chicken, fish, and two human figures are larger in size, deeper in color, and watery in movement, to suggest the potential for a fluid conception of boundaries between a self and an other, and the need for contact and connection. |
My use of pattern for the figures on the outside—two humans, a cow, a fish, a pig and a chicken—eludes to the way in which an other will always inherently have a mystery and complexity that the singular self can’t understand. The piece speaks to the difference between barriers and membranes.
As Karen Warren states in "Ecofeminism Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters,"
“The challenge is to experience the other ecologically, not hierarchically.” (85, Warren)
As Karen Warren states in "Ecofeminism Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters,"
“The challenge is to experience the other ecologically, not hierarchically.” (85, Warren)
When Will We Respond?
3’ X 8’2” 2017 Acrylic, urethane and beeswax paint, and colored pencil on paper Using cancer—defined as cell growth that fails to respond to signals that maintain the balance of cell proliferation and death—as metaphor, I gesture to the unchecked expansion that is central to global capitalism. Humans (largely from Western, colonial societies) seem unresponsive to environmental signals indicating the extreme destruction caused by our profit-driven system. Spliced with an image of a mass grave of human and animal skeletons—coral reefs, elephants, fish, reptiles and others particularly threatened by human activity—the painting alludes to destructive consequences of prioritizing profit growth over the health of the environment and those who depend on it for life. I exaggerate the size and weight of the cancer cells which seem to expand limitlessly beyond the frame, in comparison to the small, skeletal bodies, to point to this perverse imbalance in our values. |
I Am Trapped Inside This Body and Can’t Get Out, I
55” X 36” 2017 Acrylic paint, pumice, pastel on grey paper For this series, I explored the emotional trauma of an animal trapped both by a physically confining structure and by their own bodies that are controlled and manipulated from the outside. I depict a female animal, in the case a sow, for two reasons: the majority of animals in the agriculture industry are female, and the victims, both human and animal, of sexual and reproductive exploitation are majority female. As the roughened hands grab at the sow’s flesh, one artificially inseminating her at the bottom, the soul tries in vain to stretch away from the body that has become her cage. Her face at the top is marked and scarred with derogatory words culturally associated with pigs—an element explained further in the second painting description. |
I Am Trapped Inside This Body and Can’t Get Out, II
55” X 36” 2017 Charcoal and acrylic paint on grey paper This piece, based on the concept described in the first of the series, accentuates how an animal is reduced to purely a body to be exploited. Written onto the pig’s body are words colloquially attributed to pigs: “beast, corrupt politician, glut, soulless, fat, subhuman, livestock, flesh, pork, machine, filthy, dirty, greed.” These words indicate the attempts within culture to rationalize our subjugation of them. I painted the body and the cage bars with a heaviness and weight as a way to juxtapose the movement of the head—commonly associated with the center of individuality—that cannot detach from the body. |
I Am Trapped Inside This Body and Can’t Get Out, III
55” X 36” 2017 Acrylic paint, pumice, and oil pastel on paper The third iteration focuses on a female cow, with words again carved into her body and hands probing at her flesh. The dark purple color palette, the words “property, machine, beast, chattel, productive unit,” and the depiction of branding and taking away of the cow’s child in the background, are all subtle visual cues to allude to the overlap in traumatic tactics used to exploit animals and humans—in this case enslaved Africans in the United States— for the sake of profit. Seeing as the oppression of humans and animals commonly reduces individuals to merely a body or bodily functions as economically valuable labor, the concept of the body as cage can reach across experiences of exploitation and cultivate cross-species empathy. |
But We Are Not, We Are Not, We Are Not Animals
48” X 34” 2016 Oil on canvas In my writing and research about Western humanism, I have explored how the denial of our animality and mortality leads to the conception of the self as independent and autonomous, rather than inherently connected and vulnerable. In this painting, I blur the boundaries between the human and the animal bodies, and between the external and internal environment. As the pigs, each of whom exhibit signs of injuries that are common in industrial confinement, overlap with the human body, they become the human’s diseased internal organs—a visual reference to the compromised health of industrially raised animals as well as the human health impact of consuming their bodies. The landscape is also visible inside the human; in the background are two factory farm sheds and a large lagoon where the animal waste is flushed into and pollutes the water, leading to fish deaths. |
Let the Levee Break
3.5’ X 12’ 2017 Charcoal on grey paper Let the Levee Break is part of a series I am creating on the power of oppressed humans and non-human animals to demonstrate resistance and assert their self-worth--a force of nature that cannot be constricted by the industrial systems that try and keep them silent. Though rarely documented, confined animals are known to frequently escape and resist their captivity. Considering over 70 billion farmed animals are raised and killed each year for food globally, I sought to imaginatively conceive of the magnitude of the energy and desire for freedom that industrial confinement keeps at bay. Composed of transparent, overlapping bodies that come into focus with moments of rendered detail, the drawing envisions these animals, normally restricted to the shadowy outskirts of our society, powerfully moving towards us—us being the viewer, the American “consumer.” The barriers have been broken down and distance between us begins to collapse. In the way our man-made structures seem weak when faced with the power of ocean waves, the swelling urge to be free of confined animals will continue to put pressure on our physical and ideological structures that maintain their oppression. Let the levee break, let us be washed over by the voices of individuals who have been kept silent too long. |
The Seas Are Rising
40” X 52” 2017 Oil and acrylic paint on canvas This painting originates from a similar concept to “Let the Levee Break,” but gives voice to the broader, cross-species movement of resistance. Within the surging wave that moves towards the viewer, two human faces, one of a black man and another of a woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, signify two movements that I found empowering to witness in the past year: the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police violence. The rush of water also takes the forms of an orca whale, cow, pig, chicken, and gorilla, representing groups of individuals who have actively resisted their abuse in the entertainment and agriculture industries. Considering water is both a destructive and creative force, I symbolically evoke the strength needed to break down oppressive structures in order to give rise to an enhanced, empathetic way of relating to one another. |
Enfleshment
Each with approximate dimensions of 38" X 16"
2017
Water-based acrylic and urethane paint, cardboard
Each with approximate dimensions of 38" X 16"
2017
Water-based acrylic and urethane paint, cardboard
enflesh
verb 1. to grow flesh or give a flesh-like form to 2. to clothe with or as if with flesh 3. to ingrain Merriam-Webster Dictionary |
I have made these acrylic paint skins--
plastic metaphors-- to try to understand how the language used to talk about an “other” lives in and on the body. This language, reflective of the unconscious ideologies of the dominant Western culture, and re-occurring and casual in its use, has enfleshed consequences. |
Words, toothed and sharpened, scarred onto bodies,
a cultural mutilation. Words projected by some onto “others” as if the “other” was just a blank canvas of skin. |
The abstraction of a black man
Predator, Criminal, Ape, Primitive, Subhuman The abstraction of an immigrant Rapist, Alien, Uncivilized, Laborer, Subhuman The abstraction of a pig Beast, Greedy, Property, Stock, Subhuman |
The abstraction of a chicken
Alien, Coward, Automaton, Bird Brained, Subhuman The closer to an animal, or rather farther from “human,” the less inherent value Individuals reduced to a singular amorphous body ghostly, veiled. |
I don’t mean to equate or simplify,
as each being and group of beings has their own intricate history, their own experiences, their own fights. |
But I hope to probe at and excavate
for why the language we use emphatically denies the personhood, agency, profound beingness of those (humans and non-humans) who are systemically kept out of the realm of respect. |
Can a presence,
of subjectivity, value, worth be brought into this language and the conceptions that form it? Can the skin be reclaimed as an organ of touch, of contact? Warmed from the soul underneath Porous and sensitive to those around us. |
The potential
for empathic connection with other life-worlds lies behind, underneath The surface layer where the anima lives. Anima: the root of the word “animal,” meaning a current of air; earthly breath; the soul. |
Fugitives
11” X 16” 2016 3 color stone lithograph and oil paint on paper One in an edition of ten, this piece depicts two runaways fleeing in opposite directions, seemingly away from the space in the center. On the left side, a cow leaps over a barbed wire fence, the background a toxic-colored haze with industrial sheds, and on the right side, a slave runs past an empty field, a neck collar on the ground, the kind used on slaves who have tried to escape before. In focusing on the cow as the subject, an animal often seen as an object of consumption rather than a subject of life, I intent to contextualize the cow’s experience by linking it to an act of resistance by a human, in this case an enslaved African American. The pure, unabated need for autonomy, survival, and freedom displayed by these individuals offer a counter-narrative to one of passive victimization that shapes the cultural imagination surrounding domination of other humans and animals. |
Mirrored Bodies
9.5" X 16"
3 color photo plate and stone lithograph with oil paint top layers
2015
9.5" X 16"
3 color photo plate and stone lithograph with oil paint top layers
2015
An Ungrievable Life
60" X 32"
Oil on canvas
60" X 32"
Oil on canvas
To See Through
30" X 54"
2015
Oil on canvas
30" X 54"
2015
Oil on canvas
Cannibalism
54" X 48" 2015 Oil on canvas Despite the subdued imagery, this painting subtly refers to a largely unknown aspect of modern factory farming practices. In the cows’ feed are chicken feathers and flesh-colored marks, indicating the way in which animal feed tends to be “enriched” with byproducts of the rendering process of other animals, meaning cow feed will have traces of poultry, pig, and other cow body parts. |
Every 0.004 seconds
15" X 13" 2016 Oil on canvas According to United Poultry Concerns, 50 billion chickens, which is more than 6 times the total human population—are slaughtered worldwide each year, meaning that one chicken is killed every 0.004 seconds. This painting gives a moment to honor one of these individuals. |
Fall 2014-Spring 2015
Consumed/Consumption
36" X 30" Oil on canvas The figure's gaze and disintegrating flesh portray a vulnerability. Through the figure's posture, the ripping of skin, and the bloated stomach, I sought to capture the sickness of apathy and greed that inflicts us as humans. The mask of a cow skull symbolizes how we conceal ourselves and hide beneath our greed, seeing as the word “capital” has roots in the word “cattle,” from when wealth was determined by the number of cattle one owned. I use the direct eye contact of the figure to urge the viewer to confront this weak part of our humanity. In my use of meat imagery with the stamp and sticker, I intend to show how we treat other lives is connected to how we treat our own. |
Rejecting the Anima
50" X 36" 2014 Oil on canvas This painting originated from my understanding of the word animal, and our denial of its meaning. "Anima" is the root word of animal, meaning "soul, life" yet this inner soul is what we continually deny animals have. In our rejection of the inner life of other animals, we have also rejected the animal soul within us. The first painting shows the struggle to remove this essential part of us, and in the later painting, I depict the lifelessness of the figure once he/she has removed the interior animal soul. |
Fatal Separation
26" X 48" and 26" X 18" 2014 Oil on canvas Similar to the previous pieces, this painting comments on the human urge to separate/deny/disassociate ourselves from other animals. Here though, I chose to emphasize the body versus the mind, a fictional dichotomy that we've created to distinguish ourselves, the intellectual animal, from other animals, mere bodily creatures. The body of the figure merges and becomes indistinguishable amongst the fleshy terrain, which is illuminated by warm light, while the figure's arms and head have successfully separated from the body and now are in isolated agony. |
In reading about a Aztec god who flayed himself in order to save humanity, I was captured by the symbolism of skin as a sign of sacrifice and as an exterior wall of flesh that separates us from one another. In my piece, only when the human figure sheds the skin of his ego, signifying renewal, is he able to come forward and join with the animal. The expressions and gestures of the figures show their mutual reconciliation and healing. As a sign of rebirth, sacrifice, and of the perceived difference between individuals, I find the imagery of skin and the removal of it, to be particularly evocative in asking us consider our own ability to sacrifice.