ARTIST STATEMENT

My work has always been about creating monsters. These monsters are sympathetic characters, the outsider, acting out of pain and fear rather than malice. My work particularly deals with LGBTQ+ individuals as the outsider, the monster, and our need to develop defense mechanisms to live in a cishetero-centric world. LGBT people are often portrayed as monsters with the abundant queer-coding of villains in media, so I particularly feel drawn to the concept of the monster as a queer allegory. 

These defense mechanisms are embodiments of primal reactions to trauma- fight, flight, or freeze, inspired by the wild animals of the world we live in and their reactions to predation, competition, and violence. These animalistic reactions to primal fear follow the fight, flight, freeze model throughout the animal kingdom- including humanity. However, there is an aspect of animalistic self-expression that humans lack. I would like to, with my pieces, allow humans to feel this deep, animalistic expression of fear and pain that is discouraged in society. 

These objects biomechanically adapt the body of the wearer into that of the monster, the jewelry a form of armor, protection from the outside world, as well as objects of expression. The addition of metal to the body, as well as the concepts and designs behind the wearables, raise the question of what it means to be human. How much can we add to the body before we become unrecognizable, how much can be taken away and changed from a person until we become inhuman?