Artist Statement
At the start of my work is the question: what are the politics of waiting rooms? How does the architecture of those spaces affect the individual body on a cognitive and physical level. How does it affect the collective?
Consider the possibility of a site that is non-historical, non-specific, and non-relational. Can this site exist? My work explores the spatial and psychological barriers between class-structure, location, and body language through time-based mediums and installations that utilize overly-familiar objects and mundane interior spaces. Non-spaces, according to theorist Marc Auge, historically refer to sites such as highways, airport terminals, waiting rooms, shopping centers, and other liminal spaces.
Since beginning to work with Non-Spaces in 2016, I have attempted to confront the viewer with something that is seemingly familiar, like sitting in a waiting room, but which has been suspended through the use of repetitious, unplaceable sounds and degraded and misplaced images. These materials ask us to re-evaluate the invisible structures that we might participate in on a daily basis.
My hope in making this work is to use the Non-Space paradoxically from its original definition. The Non-Space as a psychological manifestation that occurs within generic architectural sites that enacts an entirely oppositional response to anonymity-- connection and relatability. The seemingly un-interesting space of transience and non-thought could perhaps be a space that evokes the human body, identity, and culture. I use topics such as finance, the apocalypse, and migration to create systems of analyzing and navigating this subjectivity.
*The majority of this work and my ideas were created prior to the pandemic and have taken on vastly different meanings now. The collective awareness has shifted and my practice is still assessing these shifts.