Dermascapes: 2019-present
My Dermascapes interrogate the well-tread trope of
"body-as-landscape," but rather than using idealized natural forms to
analogize similarly idealized, uncritical allusions to the human body
(which are all too often coded as female), I instead depict ambiguous
bodily landscapes in states of dysfunction and rupture. Utilizing
references ranging from the transcendental painting group, to medical
diagrams, to pimple-popping videos, I explore the question- can one find the sublime in something
as abject and mundane as a pimple, or a blister?
These bodies of
work more directly address an element that has always been unconsciously
present in my work: catharsis. Where my past pieces in the Mask and Peel series played with concealing and revealing, this series emphasizes bringing matters to the surface, and expelling them.