The Self, Or Stranger

In works parodying my struggles as a navel-gazing self-portrait artist, I find humor in the follies of anthropocentrism, sorrow in species loneliness, pain and absurdity in embodiment, and shame in complicity with a cultural inheritance that has privileged some through the exclusion of others. Pulling from various art historical and philosophical sources ranging from Classicism, Romanticism, and the Enlightenment, to Surrealism, psychoanalytic theory, and post-structuralism, I place disparate aesthetics and their corresponding historical contexts into tense dialogue. Within these scenes, grotesque bodies emulate cultural roles, producing situations that are alternately humorous and serious, disturbing and tender, realistic and idealized. These juxtapositions foreground the tensions inherent to the performance of “self,” and enable exploration of those forms of cultural inscription which drive identity formation. This complicates, rather than essentializes the relationship between “self” and “other” and brings into focus the role that our contradictory histories play in constituting our present “selves.”