Artist Statement

As an emerging academic-turned-artist, my interests lie at the intersection of numerous disciplines attempting to understand violence as a global phenomenon. While the word conjures images of physical brutality, I am most interested in how social and political violence seeps into our daily practices and ideologies. In my own struggles to articulate this ubiquity, zine-making became a non-consequential format for unpacking violence and its role in my own life amidst the demands of graduate coursework. While a zine could be made at any moment with the materials lying around my house, academic writing required a dedicated form and process to align with disciplinary standards. The accessibility of the zine as an art object made me consider how this form could also be utilized as a tool for theorizing without limitation.

From this practice, I began to use artists’ books to engage with critical theory outside of academic paradigms. Theory is often discarded as inaccessible, aloof, grandiose, or hypothetical. How might these assumptions transform when theory and practice collide? In my current work, I explore this tension using letterpress printing, bookbinding, and hand papermaking as technologies for enacting theory both in the processes of making and in the content of the finished works. In many instances, this involves the compilation of language from theoretic texts alongside text pulled from digital platforms, overheard conversations, or found ephemera. In this body of work, I aim to make theoretical inquiry accessible.