When I first entered the studio to bring this body of work to life, I was hoping to make sense of a world that feels increasingly fractured and difficult to recognize.

Red or blue. Sacred or profane. Us or them. The line between what is real and what is artificial no longer seems to exist. It boggles the mind.

My first path into the work was a reactive, frustrated howl at an invisible enemy. It proved that I was still stuck inside the system. So I kept moving.

Each piece in this show grew steadily out of explorations of the mechanisms that divide us, looking for their vulnerabilities and ways to exploit them. It’s only fair.

The work pushed me deeper into the systems that sort us, feed our fears, and tell us where we belong.

These systems all seem custom-built to exploit something fundamental about us…

We need each other.

We are communal apes. We thrive together. Isolation is how we punish people. Deny someone human connection long enough and we even call it torture.

But the longer I followed the work, the more it turned the mirror back on me. It forced me to look at my own participation in these systems, the categories I accept, the fears I react to, and the ways I let data tell me where I belong.

I eventually came to realize that I wasn’t angry. I was afraid. Afraid of isolation. Of raising a family without a tribe. Of being vulnerable. The work shifted away from the machinery and towards real human connection. The show’s subject finally landed for me.

It’s about you. And how much I miss you.

I miss learning about you over coffee. I miss your presence in my physical life. I miss connecting directly with the strange and difficult and funny and impossible-to-summarize creatures that we are. I miss the thrill of discovery that comes with getting to know the real you without an algorithm deciding which parts of you matter most.

This show is an effort to connect with you. To get close enough to each other  that the stories we have been handed about each other begin to fall apart. Close enough to remember that normal isn’t normal.

We are complicated little creatures, stuck together on this space rock for a few decades each, each trying to be known without having to change our shape to fit the assumptions about who we are.

This work is my signal fire. It’s what I see when I look inside.  It’s an effort to be understood, and to try and understand. It’s my way of trying to find the way back to you. 

When you look at it all up close, I hope this work simply says,

“I am here.

I see you. I miss you.

Do you see me, too?”