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artist statement

I am an artist and curator, so I tend to approach art as a curator and curating as an artist. My work explores intersecting themes of embodiment, purification, devotion, reclamation, feminine archetypes, and ecology. My recent series are rooted in performance. They are staged photographs in which the subjects practice healing through the embodiment of rituals such as altar-making or feminine themes that exploited women in Western art history, such as "The Bathers," and the "Venus." We create these scenes together in effort to tap into a kind of archetypal power, using the opportunity as a moment to restore and empower the subjects.

My practice is guided by this quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

“While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving.”

Below are samples from three photography series and a performance:

“Oh, Cassandra” Trailer for a performance on Governor’s Island in 2023

“Oh, Cassandra” tells the story of the day the ocean currents stop. Through a retelling of the Greek myth, Cassandra, we present a future world full of million-dollar medical appointments, divorce announcements, dancing mania, and more.

Venus d’Estradiol

This series is an intimate documentation of the eve of my roommate’s egg retrieval procedure. After injecting her stomach with estrogen (a shot called “depo estradiol”) for just under two weeks, a constellation of bruises formed a crescent moon around her lower belly. In photographing the bruises and curvature of her stomach for posterity, I was reminded of Venus fertility figures; in particular, the Venus de Milo. My roommate’s bruised torso personified for me not only a modern and empowered version of the timeless fertility figure, but also the unseen and ongoing sacrifices one makes to become a parent.

The work uses the archetype of Venus, goddess of beauty, fertility, and love, to cast the IVF journey in an empowered and ethereal light, pushing against the taboos around conceiving beyond a person’s twenties.

“Venus d’Estradiol” was exhibited in ActionReaction at LIC-A, The Factory, Queens, NY in 2023.

Scales of Reproductive Justice (Portrait of Libby's Bruised Torso), 2021

The Bathers

“The Green Bathers” and “The Forest Bathers (Shinrin-Yoku)” were selected by artist-curator Madeline Walker as finalists in Ante Magazine’s open call "Earthly Delights” and have been profiled in an interview with Ante Magazine.

This series resituates the art historical Bathers genre in the context of ecofeminism. The classical western Bathers genre of painting, established over hundreds of years, heavily featured nude, white, unblemished, surprised or unaware women lounging in idyllic landscapes or bath houses, voyeuristically captured by male artists. I began this series in May 2020 as a response to the historical genre, as well as a way to establish a connection with the earth in solidarity from inside my apartment in quarantine. The series has developed into a raw documentation of myself and close friends performing various earth-based cleansing rituals.

Forest Bathers (Shinrin-Yoku), 2021, Photograph taken in collaboration with Maya Jackson

Sun (Flower) Bathers (Portrait of Jasmine Hayden and Jess Angima), 2021

The Ocean Bather, 2020, Drone shot taken by Roberto Castellano

Green Bathers in Quarantine, 2020, Photograph taken in collaboration with Heloise Paugam

Body as Altar Series

“The flowers, the incense, grain, spices, and honey. Offered in ritual. Are made out of the same divine stuff as you. Who then is worshipped?” - Insight Verse 153, The Radiance Sutras

Flowers on legs and other body parts form garlands of adornment for self-devotion. Inspired by a poem in “The Radiance Sutras” and the sovereign beauty of flowers, this series came out of my need to create in myself a place of solace and rehabilitation; a place to heal my broken heart and bow humbly to suffering in order to transmute it to strength and radiance. This practice became an offering to other artists who have complex relationships with specific body parts that require extra love. I have been moved by their receptivity to the ways flowers and self-devotion, particularly around body areas that have been operated on, perform labor, or have ongoing medical issues, can create a psychosomatic shift that is subtle but transformational. This series was discussed in “Women to the Front,” a televised TransBorder Art Conversation.

It's Lonely Being a Goddess, Mary Rubi, 2023