Artist’s Statement
My artwork deals with urban change –how the unfixed nature of the city presents itself as an endless pattern of decline and growth. Architectural decay and structural failure, combined with hyper-accelerated development create the continuous and cyclical layering of history that serves as my source material.
I am interested in issues that come with urban development, such as the fragility of communities and lost histories, but I also intend these concerns to serve as metaphors for more personal subjects: memory, transition, trauma, and loss.
Each sculptural artwork I create is site-specific –literally made from or attached to the space in which it is installed –and is emblematic of the history of that place. I work in a direct manner, improvising with materials on-site, as a way to make meaning and understand my surroundings and our current place in history. My installations highlight events such as a notable building burnt to the ground by arson, a window bricked-over during redevelopment, a doorway widened during building modernization, or an historic structure razed in a step towards neighborhood revitalization reflecting a community’s changing priorities. Through each architectural intervention in a space, I intend to highlight traces of the past as a way to memorialize what came before, frame the present, and inform the future.
I am invested in uncovering histories, and I employ a variety of research methods. I search for information that presents itself as a snag or turning point in the line of history, and I have often used one singular haunting image as fuel for an entire installation. I often set out to erect impossible structures, with materials that fall apart as I handle them. I am interested in the makeshift, the provisional, the kluge —and the ways in which we prop ourselves up after trauma or hardship: by any means necessary. With my work, I intend to bring the unseen –structural elements, emotional states, buried histories –into the light, to lay them bare.