ARTIST STATEMENT

I question love as broad and varied as the people who utilize it are; in sincerity, in fervor, and in truth. In a society where love is used as justification for a wide range of actions from a soft gaze to the January 6th insurrection its necessity, value, and use must be questioned. I center conceptual strategies rather than particular mediums to not limit love and its many research, aesthetic, and theoretical possibilities. I engage aesthetics through a post-minimalist approach based in sculpture.

I often enter love and its interconnected impulses such as desire, value, and erotics through the lenses of history, language, philosophy, and culture. Historical frameworks provide a wide range of information from power dynamics and economies of care to studies in Greek and Roman mythology relating to depictions of Venus, Cupid, and Psyche. I utilize language and poetics alongside aesthetic and conceptual queues to allow for challenging revelations; a harsh truth, a journey, a lie. 

Philosophy and theory open a wide range of interconnected notions and frameworks within culture including ethics, affect, and logic. Recently I have been grappling with the ethical dimension spurred on by Philosopher Raja Halwani’s book Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage (2018). He raises questions and distinctions such as the roles of the lover and the beloved, various types of romantic love, and “Is it ethical to love?” Affect theory is an integral emerging aspect of the work I do, largely due to its exploration of visceral forces beneath, alongside, and other than conscious knowing, while also intersecting with queerness, psychology, cultural studies, and sociology.