Artists: Ginnia Araujo Linu Del Deo Nara Seymour Laura Silverman Mckinley Streett Lyla Zimmerman
On artistic approach Imputation
Poet and Writer, Kahlil Gibran writes in his 1923 book The Prophet, “no man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.” I believe this is the approach in which we met the six young artists that fall of 2019. In search to coexist in this world by first existing as one’s individual self and to understand the vantage point and placement of our physical, spiritual and mental presence as it exists amongst others. These realities are influenced by various personal notions, such as the implications of tradition and genealogy and that of imagined communities reflecting on origins and perception. It is through the self will of each of these emerging artists that they have gathered and immersed themselves in italian customs, ideas and centuries of history to explore moments of critical debate while acknowledging the desire to cultivate and nourish their artistic voice and perspectives alongside that of artists, educators and scholars. Through understanding the various lenses in which art is defined and challenging the frameworks set in place to view contemporary art, each artist works to reinforce or dismantle notions presented by prior hierarchies. With hybrid opportunities to redefine the meaning of failure and transform their role as artist, a sense of poetic humanity has erupted. With a particular and sensitive approach to art making, several ideologies are visible through the works of Nara Seymour, Laura Silverman, Ginnia Araujo, Linu Del Deo, McKinley Streett and Lyla Zimmerman. Tatjana Lightbourn
To impute is to ascribe value through an examination of the materials and the processes that where employed in realization of an object or form. The group of artists in this book offer an altered perspective from socially, politically, academically and historically prescribed “norms” and a shifted focus across a range of young and critically engaged stances, all rooted in a process of collective dialogue and shared space. The works range from painting to sculpture and encompass a broad array of approaches to art making, all of which have social foundations and implications. Healing and belonging are in dialogue with works that grapple with the veneration intrinsic to oppressive systems. Agency and aspirational upkeep navigate conversations on receding values and mass production. Rejected policing brushes against reclaimed positionality. The works expose social control and provoke the viewer towards an enduring meditation on the need for counter-narration. Drawing upon one year of profound reflection and shared studio space this group of artists, all of whom shifted residence from the United States to Italy from fall of 2019 through the now historically marked spring of 2020, offer a refreshing yet weighted look at the Florentine context subverted as a site for cultural production, as a space for engaging the imposition and implications of social distancing and as a place for the questioning of the legitimacies of the framing of history and canons. This book is an attempt to work towards the rectifying of a longstanding and constantly evolving social wrongdoing on behalf of the systems and institutions of art. It is an attempt to reclaim and recalibrate the neglected value of art to enact change that is simultaneously personal and collective. We ask that you as the viewer work to impute beyond the prescribed narratives and frameworks with openness and honesty. Justin Randolph Thompson
“It’s about how perhaps what we want to say we figure out from our childhood…And we spend the rest of our lives trying to say it.” Roberto Lugo
Justin Randolph Thompson
“I think that studying clay helped me understand that ugly things, muddy things, or things that are unformed are just waiting for the right set of hands.” Theaster Gates
Pleasantries and greetings can seem like a crucial way to communicate something about human emotions, well-being or caring and often frame our daily rituals and interactions. This has resulted in the shifting of wellintentioned and potentially powerful words into benign and meaningless punctuations of human interaction. In a sense, our familiarity with these words, in the mouths of strangers and loved ones alike, generates a dismissive lack of appreciation for their potential truths and essential power. Linguists have developed the term phatic to describe exchanges, which neither seek nor offer value or information. The divisive classifications that separate art from craft, over time, have carried many similar implications and brought on a contemporary moment where, we too frequently neglect to seek value or information in many mediums deemed rooted craft. The work of Ginnia Araujo engages the capacity of repetition, in regards to production and aesthetic rhythm, to generate a reflection that parallels this idea. Words repeatedly and meticulously stamped into the clay become simultaneously, obsessive branding by the maker, and a collection of letters obliterated into texture. The works’ reference to reproduction and incompletion further enhances this aspect, as the viewer becomes the maker, positioned to embrace the function of the objects and the ability to seamlessly pick-up where the artist left off. The role of the viewer imaginatively becomes that of stamping of salutations in a language, as ridden with tourist style tokens and souvenirs, as it is ripe with a hopefulness to go beyond the surface; physically digging into and displacing the clay. Her most recent works posits a question to the viewer as a request for appreciation that shifts its meaning through an increasingly careless application.
“How is your heart today?”, terracotta, raku, 30 x 30 cm
“Ciao heart”, terracotta, unfired, 18 x 20 x 10 cm
“Ciao”, terracotta, unfired, 20 x 10 cm
“repeat after me”, acrylic on plywood, 90 x 45 cm “why don’t you just enjoy it?”, acrylic on plywood, 37 x 28 cm
Justin Randolph Thompson
“I believe in low theory in popular places, in the small, the inconsequential, the antimonumental, the micro, the irrelevant; I believe in making a difference by thinking little thoughts and sharing them widely. I seek to provoke, annoy, bother, irritate, and amuse; I am chasing small projects, micropolitics, hunches, whims, fancies.” J. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure
What does it mean to police artistic expression away from personal meditations on trauma for the sake of providing un-offensive and conservative visions of “proper” and “in-proper” elaborations of personal experiences and concerns? The term “De-Generate” as applied to art has extensive historical and political significance. In propagandizing and categorically shaping the “in”, and by deduction, the “out” in relation to visions of respectability and moral acceptability, artistic production’s role as a form of transgression towards repressive norms and regulations is muzzled, silenced and discredited. With the vast majority of artists today working outside of “traditional” spheres of representation and a growing appreciation of the distresses of contemporary life, new avatars of self-representation and a freedom of expression that do not ask permission are self-validating tactics employed to take a system(that is non-representative of most) to task. Linu Del Deo’s meditations on class-based perceptions of that which is poisonous or hazardous is expressed through a range of drawing collages whose luscious pallets and vivid mark-making lure the viewer in with clusters of fruited vegetation, which seemingly mask out all that exists beyond the foregrounded pleasantries. Their all-over compositions generate an anxiety advanced by what reads as a horror vaccui, as the viewer is forced into the precarious navigation of tangled vines intersected with jagged strips that reinforce a sense of surface riddled with allusions to bandage like protections. The contents that are concealed can only be intimated through the hyper-saturation of an ever-ripe bounty.
I am an American-born multimedia artist with a degree in English Writing and Illustration from Hampshire College, MA. My work illuminates the line between fiction and reality—spurring a dialogue in which artists making difficult, controversial work connect through their art and each other’s lived experiences. I use my practice as a multimedia artist to study the discourse revolving around so-called “degenerate” artists of modernity and their creative rights, responding to the authoritarian policing of dark fantasy, the queering of the term “degenerate,” and the ironic romanticism of abuse which individuals coming out of traumatic situations use to connect and cope.
“Misunderstood.” Masking tape, pencil and pastel on placemat paper. 14 x 12 inches. 2020.
“Tarnished Progressivism” March 15, 2020
This Spring semester I started work with a lot of optimism. After spending winter break with my extended family in Denmark, I was very eager to redirect my curiosity away from ceramic tiles and onto mixed media drawing. What brought me to this decision was a combination of factors: one, I knew that in order to produce a decent body of work for the semester, my DIS would require a proficiency in ceramics that I did not currently possess. I did not have the patience to learn an entirely new medium in the span of three months. And two, for a long time I had been unsatisfied with the self-imposed limitations I put on my drawings. I desired to create bigger drawings and to push the medium as far as it could go. For this reason I began to explore the use of painter’s tape in the early stages of drawing. I still intended to follow through with the meaning and statement behind my work. I was making work that would symbolize the struggle of “degenerate” artists, frequently LGBTQ artists. In an increasingly sterilized and atomized virtual environment for artists and illustrators, failure to make sterile, pure and “unproblematic” art resulted in severe backlash, threats of violence, and sometimes even physical or financial harm. My goal was, and still is, to provide a safe space for victims of art policing, no matter how depraved, sexual, or graphic their work is. I have been exploring plant symbolism lately, namely misunderstood plants which used to be considered toxic, as a metaphor for so called “degenerate” art being considered a harmful mechanism through which artists cope with the world and with their own needs. The tomato plant has been an abundant source of inspiration for me. I use tomato plants as a metaphor for dark, difficult, painful art. Starting with small sketches which showed cherry tomatoes dripping with moisture, I aimed to harness the psychological, sexual and biological energy behind these forms. When I began to make large drawings of the cherry tomatoes, I came upon an interesting historical detail which would prove to be essential for my work. Once considered toxic, tomatoes were avoided by the wealthy elite because the acid in the fruit caused the lead in their silver plates to bleed through and poison them. Poor folk eating tomatoes on wooden dish ware were unhurt. From an elitist standpoint, what may nourish the average person may seem destructive or toxic, but for small creators originating with backgrounds of shaming, abuse and neglect from our communities, these “destructive” fruits provide nourishment. It is more necessary than ever for artists to create work that is horrid, despised, perverse, in the aim of aggressively attacking the status quo, healing themselves, and provoking thought and empathy in the minds of the elite atop their gilded thrones. The painter’s tape allowed me to step back from my usual obsessive mark-making and consider the pieces as methods of communication. What was I trying to say to the viewer? In my mind I wanted to show a mode of social bondage that could push back against the art while simultaneously bringing it forward and emphasizing it.
“Tomato Vine.� Charcoal and pencil on handmade paper. 48 x 30 inches. 2020.
Thus, I cut long strips of painter’s tape in thin ribbons and created haphazard “cage bars” for my tomatoes. Inconsistency with the distance and thickness of the tape was key, as art policing often works by moving the goal posts for degenerate artists so that anything they say or do in self defense can be used as libel, and eventually even the characteristic of being queer or punk or abused leads to suspicion about an artist’s moral character. Amid the resurgence of bigotry and hatred for minority groups in the United States, aggravated by the election of Donald Trump, conservatives have moved their attacks on minorities to virtual forums where minority groups gather to escape the violence and harassment they face in their day to day lives. Art policing has one foot deeply entrenched in evangelical conservatism (as has been observed throughout history), and the other foot equally as entrenched in radical feminist social justice causes (which operate on biological essentialism mirroring that of their proclaimed opposites, that is to say, the indoctrination that women are always victims and never abusers, thus casting men as sexually ravenous creatures who cannot be trusted to control themselves, who never, ever, are victims of abuse, sexism, or rape themselves). This belief is held strongly by both sides, and is mostly exclusive to cisgendered individuals, under the belief that transsexualism seeks to undermine progression from the trans-exclusive status quo. Because these factions believe the same thing, that men are naturally imbued with agency due to their privilege and women are inherently deprived of it, all pornographic media, even that which is made by women, is seen as a crime against society’s most vulnerable, including cis women, transsexual men (who in the eyes of evangelicals are women), and last but not least, children. Art policing rhetoric, as it exists today, uses the same kinds of marketing techniques to appeal to the masses as were used during the 70’s against queer people. Art policing shapes the issues to present them as threats against the “family,” against the children, and against common decency and morals. This is an alarming shift for a movement that aims to work in the name of “progressivism.” Which brings me to suggest that evangelical conservatives have figured out how to hack into the political mainframe of social justice causes, using arguments that, on the surface, seem reasonable and just, but upon a closer inspection reveal that their goal is to kill those who do not fit their requirements for living. Thinking of all the tragically misinformed queer people backing up these conservative arguments, I fail to see where they think they’ll be once all the artists and writers who were fighting for their freedom are gone. Do they think the evangelicals will welcome them with open arms? The lesbians, the furries, the culture geeks? When will they realize that their passivity is a death sentence not only for artists making taboo work, but also for their very identities which are considered taboo in the mainstream as well? Both evangelical conservatives and “progressivist” art policers believe that published drawings depicting unsavory topics (such
“Grappoli.� Masking tape, pencil and pastel on handmade paper. 48 x 30 inches. 2020.
as rape, torture, child abuse, and incest) are inherently harmful to society and have the explicit power to groom the young and vulnerable into believing these topics can be adopted as sustainable modes of living. This is oddly familiar to campaigns pursuing the abolition of gay characters in fictional media on the premise that it will turn straight boys into sissies. When social progressivists promote the bad-faith justifications for censorship that conservatives use, you see a strange bedfellows’ case of minority communities turning on their own and eating themselves alive. This is what is happening in virtual spaces that host artists and writers right now. Small creators are being suicide-baited (in which hoards of users tell their victim to kill themselves, often resulting in the victim’s hospitalization), doxxed (when the private information such as legal names, addresses, photographs and workplaces of the victim are published to sites where they could be used to fire, stalk, or kill the victim), threatened graphically with violence (often of a sexually sadistic nature), sent CSEM (acronym for “child sexual exploitative material,” which includes videos and pictures of real children being sexually abused by adults), and accused of pedophilic sexual crimes they did not commit. And these measures are all mostly being done by politically “left-leaning” individuals who consider these forms of abuse to be direct action against the enemy. It is strange to think that the mainstream perception of the common enemy hasn’t changed much since the previous century. Although TV shows and films have (mostly) moved beyond casting the villain-type as a gender-nonconforming, rapacious deviant, both progressivist and conservative social movements are brimming with that same conception that regular people can’t be both “good” and “kinky,” or “perverted” and “principled.” There is a dog whistle now which can easily be spotted a mile away, where one claims that so-and-so taboo media “normalizes” a criminal act and makes victims of these acts less likely to recognize their own plight as it’s happening. But even the most romanticized abusive situation, in fiction, is rarely meant to teach an Aesop about how to conduct oneself in reality. If it is meant to teach anything it is that fiction and art are conduits through which people express their fears, fantasies and fury in a safe and non-violent way. Degenerate art is a form of non-violent protest against the horrors of reality we all face as one. Violence is a feature of life that many of us cannot escape, and for this reason I fully support the creative rights of artists far and wide who make, as the coinage goes, “degenerate” art.
“Red” Pastel on red fabriano paper. 20 x 27 inches. 2020.
“Set Me Free.” Masking tape, pencil and pastel on red fabriano paper. 27 x 20 inches. 2020.
“Il Cuore del Toro” Pastel and pencil on white paper. 27 x 20 inches. 2020.
Justin Randolph Thompson
“It just wouldn’t be as fun for people to consume the images once they are tethered to such suffering.” Tricia Rose, Interview with Ceasefire Magazine
When we place too much emphasis on the role of art objects themselves to speak on aesthetic and conceptual terms without a regard for context, we slip into the default framings that have historically been blind to the limitations of access and privilege in shaping the contemporary art spatial aesthetic as one rooted in white walls and strategic lighting. We also forget to hold museum structures and institutional hierarchies accountable for the stripping of critical contexts in regards to the display of objects that are reconfigured in meaning through this violent take over. The ritualized, wearable, sculptural objects created by Nara Seymour pose questions about the spaces and canonical devices that have over-determined the singular fixed narrative embodied by sculpture through her transfiguration of multi-generative contextualizing ambiguities. Seymour’s use of the camera is fitting. given its violent history of evacuating cultural specificities and her employment of this tool of modern colonial construction posits a multitude of reflections and potential understandings for each object that she takes on. The works are simultaneously reflective of the mask in its superficial disguising of truths and vanishing of complexities, and indebted to a meditation on healing, on holistic terms, in relation to physiological, historical and socio-physical trauma.
“Untitled” 2019, Earthenware, 5”x 9”
“Eye” 2019, Stoneware, 2”x 5”
Healing is Delayed, mesmeric in its Treating, scarring, mending is Ever so impaired, Therapeutic, theses Rituals are Compulsive, ancient, and timeless. Crying, to Forget, Knowing the Never-ending Methods are Marginal Pretty dark and Hiding. Shrinking and merging in a Never-ending Mediocrity. Decay becomes Premature, it’s secret but universal. Damaging, crumbling, aging in ways I could never believe it to Grow. The Unseen Unexpected, mystical display of moving, appearing So funny when forced to be visible. When turned into Archives of Secret, sacred elements. And Removing, collecting, and cataloging It makes me feel….. so big me and My Possessions.
“Searching…” 2019 Stoneware,4”
“Untitled” 2019, Stoneware, 2”x 5”
“Unknown” 2019, Stoneware, 3”x 6”
“I” 2019, Earthenware, 2”x 5”
“Safeguarding the Mysterious” 2020, wire, fabric, black tourmaline, 1”x4”
They appear to be surrounded by traps, fighting off every intruder. Feelings of pain can never be forgotten. Seeing past the mask is not something they choose to do so, it creates distance and solitude. Leaving people too afraid to approach. When we can no longer protect ourselves, the mask becomes our downfall. Keeping the distance between oneself and others. A gesture of solitude and isolation.
“Untitled” 2019, Stoneware, 5”x 9”
“Hold it together” 2019, Earthenware, 5”x 5”
“Untitled” 2019, Stoneware, 5”x 9”
“Is it Working?” 2020, mask, string, 5”x10”
“In front of the veil” 2020, fabric, 5”x10”
“Self Protection”, 2020, toilet paper roll, 5”x5”
“Blind” 2020, 5”
“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” Alice Walker
Justin Randolph Thompson
“When we recognize that the practice of gardening, planting and reconnecting to the earth can have positive neurological and psychological impacts, then we, as scholars and activists, are moved to open up the discourse to an ecowomanist reality of honoring the connection with earth as healing.” Melanie W Harris, Ecowomanism
There is a way in which the cityscape of even an ancient city like Florence can seem to veil the nature its history has paved over behind every building and fence, trapped within the privacy and intimacy of courtyards and gardens, relegated to privileged ownership and subjected to privatized care. In a quest to engage in the nourishment and health represented by plants as symbolic of life and breath, public space often incorporates flora and fauna into its urban design, setting these plants as the physical delineations of boundaries, as resistance to potential acts of terror and, more frequently, as symbols of eco-consciousness. Visually, they clash with concrete and paving stones, with ashtrays and garbage receptacles providing fleeting moments of beauty but highlighting a necessity for upkeep, care, sustenance and respect run through with precariousness. In the work of Laura Silverman, painting is a daily ritual, an incessant elaboration of the layering of saturated color and faceted marks and a meditative nourishing of the spirit akin to the hopefulness of the grass that grows through the cracks in the sidewalk. Her street scenes carry a temporality that is fragile and ethereal, with grates on windows, closed storefronts and the casual floral arrangements of the commerce of plants indicative of domestic environments. These intimately scaled works are coupled with a separate series of paintings that self-consciously and directly engage portrayals of the female nude weighted with mourning, dislocation yet echoing with peaceful rest. These self-portraits occupy dreamscapes in which the fertility we associate with nature seems alluded to in the vulnerability of the figure, her willing desire to feel the earth beneath her, void of the harsher realities, positing all that is urban as detritus.
“Self Portrait� oil on canvas, 24 x 24, 2019
Through the exploration of color palettes with studies of vegetation, landscapes, still lifes and self portraits, my work is a reflection and meditation on loss, trauma, memory and corporeality. Broadly, I use my work to understand my individual lived experiences. My work of Florentine cityscapes and plant life investigate the ecology and biology of life in Florence, Italy. Each color has its own volume and physicality, especially in the relation to the texture of the canvas peeking through on each work of art. Each painting evokes a certain type of melancholy, nostalgia or memory, which is central to my practice. Some of my other work more directly acknowledges personal traumas and losses that I have experienced. My self portraits in dream-like environments work to examine the different states of being when confronted with the death of my best friend. These paintings are a representation of the transformative nature of grief, loss, trauma and memory and how it can be presented in various aspects of life. My work allows me to critically confront my issues with my body image, be most vulnerable, and allow me to be a stand in figure for the loved one that I lost. Subsequently, the line between life and death is blurred.
“Florentine Flowe Market” oil on canvas, 5 x 7, 2020
“Balcony View” oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2020
“A Walk By the Arno” ink wash, 5.5 x 8, 2019 “Succulent Garden” oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2020
“Purple Succulent” oil on canvas, 8 x 10, 2020
“Loss” oil on board, 24 x 48, 2019
“Lily’s Backyard” oil on canvas, 5 x 7, 2020
“More Planter” oil on canvas, 5 x 7, 2020
“Weeds” oil on canvas, 8 x 10, 2020
“Street Market” oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2020
“Plant Barricade” oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2020
“Succulent” oil on canvas, 4 x 6, 2020
“The Swamp” oil on canvas, 84 x 36, 2020
“Graffiti and Plants” oil on canvas, 8 x 10, 2020
“Dead Succulent” oil on canvas, 4 x 6, 2020
“Giardino dei Semplici” oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2020
“Closed” ink wash, 12 x 19, 2020
“Reminiscing” oil on canvas, 8 x 10, 2020
“Empty Shop” ink wash, 12 x 19, 2020
“Yellow and Blue” oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2020
Justin Randolph Thompson
“Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.” Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader
Percy Shelley spoke of poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world. If the role of artists is to recalibrate all understandings of value in society, then indeed our engagement in this world is hyperpolitical. The social order that de-legitimizes art making and conjectures it as entertainment, does so only to maintain a sense of order and stability that corroborates a political framework in which, either a return to the past, or a blind aspiration in what is to come sunsets any questioning of an autocratic faceting of profit over people. Mckinley Streett grapples with stuffed pillow-like paintings, punk infused collage and DIY aesthetics to overcome the reigns of art history and technical polish in validating, rigging and controlling artistic “mastery”. Conflating questions of comfort, conformity and data as complacently aspirational, and shedding light on an ever growing tendency towards the worshipping of icons typical of the “Dark Ages”, the works are layered with the same formal strategies embedded in scientific quantifications and manipulations nuanced by images and symbols of consumption. In her work sheltering in place becomes a metaphor for the claustrophobia of pledge-ridden exceptionalist rhetoric and conservative underestimations of arts capacity to induce immense social change.
“Trash Star Altar�
In the face of neoliberalism, climate change nearing a mass extinction event, unprecedented wealth inequality, and a rise in fascism, I find it difficult to look at an advertisement for a new Barbie doll with unstained eyes. Through painting, collage, sculpture, and video - by any means necessary - I confront and lay bare the oppressive and coercive nature of our day to day lives. I like to fixate on cultural icons and rework them into a more complicated and ambiguous context in hopes of causing the viewer to reflect on these subjects and their relationships with the dominant narratives that have been transposed over us.
“Untitled”
“Whoever says anarchy says denial of the government; whoever says denial of government says affirmation of the people; whoever says affirmation of the people says individual liberty; whoever says individual liberty says the sovereignty of each; whoever says the sovereignty of each says equality; whoever says equality says solidarity or fraternity; whoever says fraternity says social order. Therefore whoever says Anarchy says social order. On the contrary: whoever says government says denial of the people; whoever says denial of the people says affirmation of political authority; whoever says affirmation of political authority says individual subordination; whoever says individual subordination says class supremacy; whoever says class supremacy says inequality; whoever says inequality says antagonism; whoever says antagonism says civil war. Therefore whoever says government says civil war.” ANSELME BELLEGARRIGUE, Anarchy is Order “Beheaded”
“Political Compass Bodybag”
“Sex Work”
“Hey Kids”
“Indulgences”
“Class War”
“Pleasure is the point. Feeling food is not frivolous, it is freedom.” Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Justin Randolph Thompson
“I believe our imaginations—particularly the parts of our imaginations that hold what we most desire, what brings us pleasure, what makes us scream yes—are where we must seed the future, turn toward justice and liberation, and reprogram ourselves to desire sexually and erotically empowered lives.” Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
If we consistently frame notions of intimacy as tethered to questions of vulnerability and fragility, then what does it mean to be erotically empowered? If sexuality is commodified through the construction of desire, flanked by the fortification of prudent taboos and policed by the politics of respectability, how can pleasure be shamelessly celebrated as a subversive enactment of freedom over these societally accepted regulations? Art history’s canonical formation of the female nude fortifies a safeguarded and self-legitimizing control over sexuality, over prudence and over agency, as constructed most frequently through the eyes of male artists, oft historically commissioned and consumed by male audiences. In the hands of capitalistic powerhouses backed by conservative religiosities the paradoxical and hypocritical nature of these forces are what is explicit. Lyla Zimmermans’ works reclaim and celebrate the agency of the image of the female sexualized body, inclusive of kinks and prowess, unable to be contained by graphic frames of what we deem “dainty”, unapologetic in rendering explicit desire that is aggressively carved into woodblock slabs and wholly conscious of the subjugating potential of the viewers gaze. In her series of self portraits, whose titles unflinchingly overpower the dehumanizing potential of aggressive cropping and voyeuristic impulses, the soft tones contrast the volatile arched back, embedding the works with distant longings for self affirmation, as confident in transgression, as in the self care contained by the enacting of assertive agency.
Utilizing medium, material and content, I intend to create a visual representation of female sexual empowerment. Through self sexual expression, my work allows sex to be a topic of discussion rather than an act of obscenity. Using my own sexual experiences as inspiration, my work aims to humanize sex positivity and inform the viewer on the politics of pleasure, while creating a sexually informative environment through the eyes of a sex conscious artist. By minimizing the concept of vulgarity and normalizing pleasure, I hope to expand upon my own sexual boundaries and share sex related content that both provokes and stimulates the viewer.
“i Used to be an XS” Watercolor, 7 x 11 in, 2020
“bitch, can you even twerk?” Watercolor, 7 x 11 in, 2020
“proud yet, mom?” Watercolor, 7 x 11 in, 2020
“bluejean Bust” Watercolor, 7 x 11 in, 2020
“Cameltoe Ain’t a Joke” Watercolor, 7 x 11 in, 2020
“lust me” Woodcut, 100 x 60 cm, 2019
“boobs are delicious” Woodcut, 60 x 83 cm, 2020
“Her kink” Woodcut, 60 x 100 cm, 2019
“Hips That Birth” Woodcut, 100 x 60 cm, 2019
“send me ur nudes” Etching, aquatint, 7 x 11 in, 2020
“cocked” Etching, Softground, 11 x 15 in, 2020
Thanks to: Dario Arcamone Nicolas Combarro Patricia Cordoba Janine Gaelle Dieudji Rajkamal Kahlon Tatjana Lightbourn Anna Rose Andrew Smaldone Agnes Stillger John Taylor Justin Randolph Thompson Chris Wyatt-Scott
Graphic design: Ilaria Biccai
