My work explores how self-identity is consciously constructed over time. My multicultural and rootless upbringing taught me that adaptability is key to survival, but it also delayed the development of my own sense of self. I learned to survive by becoming a chameleon, moving between contexts without fully belonging to any one of them. As a result, I’ve become fascinated with the curation of personality. My practice centers on identity as a process of compilation, an ongoing accumulation of roles, experiences, and choices that together form a shifting whole. I have spent most of my life with very little personal agency, and the independence I have finally gained now comes with many conditions and limitations. My work is a way for me to examine what it means to finally “arrive” at oneself, and to question whether such an arrival is ever complete. I see the many roles that I inhabit: woman, mother, student, artist, American, wife, teacher, as facets of a whole that grant me partial access to who I am.

The figures in my work appear nude, reflecting a search for confidence through vulnerability and a stripping away of imposed identities. I use mixed media and combining hard and soft materials such as wood and fabric to evoke the contradictory and sometimes incongruous nature of the self. These material tensions mirror the multiplicity I experience. I often reference furniture and the home within the work as physical anchors to a place. These forms reference domestic space as both liberating and restrictive. They are sites of intimacy, labor, and quiet joy. Autonomy comes at a price and independence is often dispensed in controlled portions, especially to women and mothers. I use sharp geometry and intentional framing to visually communicate these constraints. Ultimately, my work considers what remains after constant movement; after adapting, performing, and transitioning from one role or space to another. It asks how identity is assembled over time. What is left when you have to pause and the self is finally seen.