Artist Statement
It is important for me to focus on what it means to participate in womanhood, and what comes with being ‘feminine’. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex categorizes women as ‘the other’ and men as ‘the default’. She implies femininity and womanhood is learned and not born with, therefore lacking essence, or an ‘eternal feminine’. The act of presenting feminine has always been grotesque and unnatural in its origins. I value the representation of a niche, maybe ugly, perverted, and unidealized version of female identity. Being a woman is complex and is much more than a physicality. My work explores these matters.
I had a ‘traditional’ upbringing, in which I was raised with emphasis on my womanhood over personhood. Traditional implications of womanhood are solely performative and work to enforce restrictive gender and societal norms. Even with the modern-day multiplicities of feminism, we are still left with a hollow, corporatized version of a woman, based in materialism and consumption. Due to the strain placed on learned roles from childhood, women are often faced with, and fall victim to, imagery such as pornography, advertisements, and social media with expectations that shrink the essence of a woman.
I perform mimicry through painting stereotypes of femininity. I'm particularly drawn to the ‘performance’ and campy nature of feminine expectations, being influenced by drag and gender performance. I paint the female figure as a character that belongs to a particular world, not an object, nor accessory. Placing emphasis on the seen versus unseen of womanhood, re-contextualizes the idea of empowerment with overly customized, uncanny, and siren-like characters, serving as a means of displacement from a corporatized, dissociative, or ‘girlboss’ feminism.