Why did you choose graduate school at IUPUI?
I attended an online portfolio review with Herron and was encouraged to apply during that meeting. When I was accepted into the program, my mentors and teachers back home spoke with great excitement and encouragement as Herron School of Art + Design holds a really wonderful reputation!
What has been your favorite academic accomplishment since you’ve been here?
Herron has provided so many opportunities! Working with the faculty has been especially rewarding as it has helped me advance my art practice in a way that excites me for my future and all its possibilities. In the Fall of 2019 I had the privilege to travel to Venice, Italy to attend the Venice Biennale. This was a part of my research as I worked as a Curatorial Fellow for Asian Art History Professor, Orna Tsultem. I’d never traveled outside of the country before, let alone to the Olympics of visual art!
What do you enjoy most about life in Indianapolis?
Indianapolis is the quintessential small-big city. There are plenty of opportunities, happenings, and events but it's not intimidating at all. I’m hopeful I will get to see more of the city as we move through the pandemic.
Please provide some details about your work/research as a graduate student and/or any activities you are involved in.
I am a mixed media artist working in plaster, acrylic, latex, and more. As a queer person, I’ve grown an acute awareness to the relationship I have with place. Politics follows my body, filling me with fear, anxiety, and a general discomfort in public spaces. I think about my own experiences as an ‘other’ when constructing my mixed media objects. Through my lived experiences, I understand what it's like to be an oddity. I understand the baggage that then comes with being considered abnormal and the sense of powerlessness that comes with being otherized.
The Earth’s condition is rapidly deteriorating and I understand that this decomposition is directly linked to human action and therein, my own actions. I understand the sense of powerlessness that comes with watching climate change unfold and the sublime sense of guilt that comes with perpetuating it. This tension creates space for my work to fit snugly within the theoretical discussions of Queer Ecology; a term that aims to reimagine evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and environmental politics.
The vibratic push-pull of inconsistency, uncertainty, and seemingly fluctuating forms runs through much of my work. This fluidity of form, mark, and status is again linked to the queer experience; an ever fluctuating status of identity. The reality of being permanently in flux is the reality of being queer.