Title: The Rose of Sharon
Medium: Linocut prints
Description: This series was inspired by a dream in which a woman slowly feels her extremities turn into branches of a rosebush. The Rose of Sharon refers to Song of Solomon, in which a man refers to his lover as a flower among thorns, as if to say that among unpleasant things, she is a beautiful and delicate presence. In this piece, however, the woman is not delicate nor beautiful: though her head resembles the perfect rose so desired by the male gaze, her body is metamorphosing into a grotesque, carnal, and corpulent plant. Yet, her transformation does not so simply embody the sharp spindle of a thorn. Her subversion of patriarchal expectations is exemplified instead through taking up physical space with a muscular roundness that reflects the softness of femininity in matriarchal form.
Exhibition: The audience walks behind a black out curtain into the next room, which is completely dark. The linocut prints of the Rose of Sharon are each illuminated by an Edison lightbulb. Onto the dark wall beneath them, the animated text, which are extracts from the original dream journal’s entry, plays on a loop. Overhead, the audio plays in sync.
Title: Flower Heads
Medium: Cyanotype Photography Developed Under Artificial UV light
Description: Inspired by the Greek myth about the Moirai, or “three Fates,” Flower Heads depicts an ethereal trio of nude women whose bodies have been divided. The artificial LED UV light developed cyanotype lacks definition and sharpness, creating a dream like imprint that is reminiscent of water. The piece explores the idea of femininity and objectification; as the body is objectified by the viewer’s gaze, it is torn into pieces, leaving the body disjointed. However, to reconcile the division, there is a budding marriage between the body and new life: the sunflowers in place of heads. The decomposition is balanced by growth, and pain balanced by life, albeit at the cost of the original feminine form.
Title: Let’s Take a Selfie
Medium: Collage of Cyanotype Photographs Developed Under Sunshine, Digital Enhancement
Description: Let’s Take A Selfie gathers images that I took of my face in an animated reconstruction of slightly altered versions reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s art factory work. Unlike Warhol’s mass printing, these images are handmade cyanotypes, posing a poignant critique: Can the artist still infuse manual authenticity into the images created in the late stage capitalist ,i.e., automatic quantity over quality, and digital world? Paradoxically, while the color is developed from the sun, the cyanotype blue also refers to blue light that emanates from digital devices. The print occupies a precarious, questionably legitimate position between the sporadic “natural” environment and the reproducible art of the digital universe. The viewer is asked: does existing in the digital world make authenticity, the sharpest image, disappear over time?
Exhibition: This piece is intended to play on a loop on a series of six iPhones laid out on a table in a row. The phones are all in sync with one another. The exhibition thereby mirrors the paradox between the manual, corporal cyanotypes and the artificial blue light of phone screens.
Title: Blue
Medium: Documentary Fiction/Cyanotype Photography Developed Under Sunshine
Description: These cyanotypes from Blue are isolated from my ninety minute thesis film about the effect of the COVID pandemic on the Wellesley College student body. These images encapsulate a key theme of the film surrounding legacy, memory, and trauma. The video aims to capture the ripples of this global cataclysm by preserving how they will be remembered.