Artist's Statement

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I am a multi-disciplinary artist, and my work is deeply informed by my lifelong experience with visual disability. While initially centred on sight and perception, my practice has grown to explore broader themes of resilience, uncertainty, and transformation. I aim to challenge audiences’ perceptions, inviting reftlection on identity, vulnerability, and their emotional relationship to sight and each other.

The Logic of Subduction, an exhibition that travelled internationally from 2011 to 2014, addressed the expectation of blindness. This multi-layered sculpture and video installation evoked the anticipation of catastrophic loss and provided a visceral sense of my experience with reading. Words and phrases were present, but viewers could no longer fully apply familiar ways of reading, instead, they were tasked with constructing meaning from fragments.

In a more recent series entitled, Being. Neither here nor there, thousands of photos were taken on buses, trains, subways, and in airports over the course of three years. During the pandemic, I examined these images, finding new resonance in scenes where people seemed to dissolve into their surroundings. Themes of immediacy, delay, and agitation emerged, and the work became about capturing transience within shifting environments.

In 2023, I embarked on a new body of work, Of breath and water, featuring self-portraits drenched in rain or covered in snow, alongside fragmented images of tumultuous waves and skies that suggest an impending storm. Crafted from an assemblage of photographic negatives that span numerous and often conflicting moments, these images are produced using cyanotype and silver-based photographic processes, incorporating digital, physical, and chemical interventions.

The fractured self-portraits suggest emotional dissonance, revealing multiple facets of identity or states of mind. Often stripped of familiar features, faces are fragmented, and gestures evoke emotions like hope and despair, acceptance and resistance. Implying dialogue, multiple self-portraits often appear within a single composition, however each figure remains isolated, contributing to a sense of quiet within chaos. These impressions are heightened by elements of rain, snow, and water, which can evoke vulnerability or an overwhelming emotional state.

In each portrait, I wear a dark suit that contrasts sharply with chaotic elements. The suit, a symbol of structure and control, conceals individuality and emotion. By placing it within volatile environments, I explore the tension between projected stability and the unpredictability of inner life. When drenched or frozen, the suit becomes an ineffective armour, revealing the discomfort of maintaining composure amid turmoil. In Of breath and water, it serves as a metaphor for resilience under pressure.

The cyanotype process, with its imperfections, complements these themes, as bodies and gestures seem to emerge from and dissolve into the surrounding tones. Collaged negatives diverge from a fixed perspective, presenting a state of flux. To deepen suggestions of impermanence, I frequently oxidize the prints, add multiple layers, and further incorporate collage. These processes transform surfaces, bluring boundaries and allowing meanings to shift. Each medium adds distinct textures and tones, yet together they reflect the fluid nature of perception and identity.

My work seeks to create dialogue about sight, identity, and resilience. I invite viewers to engage with these layered compositions, encountering shared vulnerabilities that resonate beyond visual disability, connecting with broader human conditions.