Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I’m fascinated by things that unsettle and reveal social hierarchies of power that are often invisibly in place. I’m interested in making work that draws from forgotten histories or lesser-known theories of people like George Psalmanazaar, Jeanne Baré, or Lynn Margulis whose stories point out the fallacies and inequities in our inherited ideas around race, gender, or human exceptionalism.  I’m interested in reconfiguring materials in ways that highlight the liveliness and vibrancy of supposedly inanimate things—the sexuality of stones, the quantum possibilities of smell, or the racialized and gendered language around plants. I’m interested in utilizing materials in ways that speak to unstable states and the porousness of bodily boundaries.  I am eager to use art to speculate and imagine new futures where power is distributed differently and the normativity of bodies collapses into a discrepant multitude, and edifices of authority are denaturalized and crumbling.

While At Headlands

While at Headlands, I plan to research the DIY culture around foraging and extended herbal practices in medicine, dyeing, and food in the Bay Area. I am interested in thinking about a contemporary relationship to nature that is tied to community practices and self-knowledge. I’m interested in looking at how these DIY cultures might be tied to while resistant towards liberal politics and issues of gentrification. I’m interested in how our contemporary relationship to nature has changed, and how it is tied to subversive histories, such as the use of plants as abortifacients and poisons that were used in 18^th century slave resistance in the Caribbean and their counterparts in feminist womens’ movements in Europe. The work I do around this research will take the form of drawings, prints, and sculptures made of mixed media incorporating plant material.