Keep Moving and Ask No Questions (Building a Soldier) consists of a pile of toy soldiers made from Irish spring soap and my landlord's faucet that has this incessant leak. 

Dripping over the pile of soldiers, I am considering the damage and erosion that occurs from an incessant force, despite its slow and seemingly insignificant scale. How the smallest of powers can aggregate to a large, destructive impact. This impact is literal, seen in the mutilated land and bodies that come out of war zones, the physical and psychological repercussions of conflict and the instilling of obedience to power. These utterly reproducible bodies lay in a mass, disempowered figures that are activated by external forces and pressures. 

Can I Ever Be Impenetrable, (duration 60min), a screen of 'skin' stretched and pinned to the wall like a specimen, an oddity to be investigated. Ogled and gawked at as if flesh can be anything other than flesh. Upon inspection one will see hairs that protrude from the skin, an additional layer to, and of, the screen that furthers the distortion of the projected video. Modeled after hair removal ads from the 60s, I use the most technologically advanced method of laser hair removal and mimic the posture of the ads of then. The slow process and intense moments of light play with the tension of the viewer. A tightening followed by explosion, there is no release, only explosions. Continuous, methodical, explosions, no release. With this work I’m considering the notions of body hair and socio-cultural associations of body hair that are ideological opposites for the feminine and masculine. While hairless-ness has the associative imagery of idealized feminine norms/forms, having body hair is associative with masculine norms/forms. With this understanding it is quite ironic for the idealized male form for fascist imagery to be seen in the hairless, heavily muscular , man - the impenetrable man that has no orifice, not even a pore or hair follicle. The perfect, impenetrable male form that submits to nothing, not even bodily functions. The absurdity in its hypocrisy gave way to the absurdity in this work.

A sound piece called War Note this is composed of a prolonged, dragged out looping of an F1 key on an electric keyboard. An abstraction on war plans and surveillance drones that plague areas of conflict and refugee camps, like that in Gaza. This work is inescapable in the gallery space, it will always be present; until the omnipresence turns itself to a quasi invisibility. Veiled, ironically, by its constant presence, the droning note sinks to the background of the mind. The psychological warfare lays heavy as the superimposed sound lingers and persists, till it is no longer separable from the experience and is merely another element to life. To live under watch, under siege, is an experience most Americans have no concept of - though this is not a completely unfamiliar experience to Baltimore, from the previous deployment of spy planes in the early 2020s.

In this work left untitled I am blinking out “who watches the watchman” in morse code, on a loop. This question is imposed on an array of u.s. currency mounted on the wall.  I'm considering our economic state as a country and where taxpayer funds are allocated within the federal funds budget. Not to support the people but to continue a campaign of defense against some ambiguous threat that can always be adjusted to fit the agenda of those in power with resources going to enforce u.s. rule in foreign lands and terrorism on u.s. soil. 

Simultaneously, I am considering the ever growing surveillance state in the name of security and defense. The ways in which certain language is being targeted as it retracts from the oppressor's language and control over the whole. Words are banned, monuments and land are rebranded with red, white, and blue. My words take a nonverbal approach, using the most passive way to converse. I ask as one witnesses, who is watching the watchman?

Girls Who Lock Their Doors at Night explores the notion of privacy and security within an ever growing surveillance-police state. This work prompts viewers to consider the idea of privacy and security. Are we ever actually secure? Even in our own private spaces, homes, and bedrooms are we actually safe? Can we ever be “safe”? And to consider the false security for the marginalized in a society that only protects the powerful. Peering through the peephole, you are confronted with your own image in an act of voyeurism. To see a view of yourself you are most unfamiliar with, staring back at you staring in. 

Hija De Bestias, translates to daughter of beasts and is made from my hair and a hide rug my mother was going to dispose of. Titled from something my mother calls me in ridicule, I find an interesting, almost endearing truth to it despite her intention of telling me that I am not being feminine enough. I am the daughter of beasts, I am the daughter of the earth. I am the daughter of all the women who came before me, including the beasts, warriors, makers, writers, weavers, and spinners. 

With this work I'm considering identity, seeing it as a bit of a self portrait, a body, battered, a body, squeezed dry of all she’s got, dissected, and on display, a body, walked over.

Tightrope is a hand spun 4 strand double cable rope stretched out to form a nine foot long tightrope. Crafting the work utilizing spinning techniques, I utilize my own protein fiber rather than plants or nonhuman animals to create this rope. I am fascinated by how deeply rooted ideas of purity and beauty lock women within superficial bounds. Forcing a perpetual high-wire act between preference and standard made up of mysterious contradictions. Not allowing one to stray from their “path” as Woman. The path is narrow and the drop is far. 

And I wonder what was heavier/ The apple or the shame.

I see myself standing in the heart of the empire as the world burns around me. The apple hasn't changed much but the shame has festered into a monstrous form, grotesque really with its gluttonous nature. 

Mother’s Mother’s Mother, found scales stacked upon each other to form a pedestal. This work considers the teaching of obsession and the passing on of, in my case eating disorders, and constantly working towards fulfilling impossible, ever changing standards of beauty that hold genetic opposition to my own composition. The quantity of scales and varying types are like time stamps, tallies, emphasizing this obsessive nature of weight. The scale, once holding a body, becomes a pedestal.