Artist Statement

My art explores my experience with the Darknet and the lesser-known corners of the Clearnet/internet. The forums 4chan, 8chan, and 8kun, have cultivated a culture throughout the last decade that I will refer to as chan culture. Recently, chan culture has fallen into the public consciousness and is now a topic portrayed in popular media. This portrayal is often well-intended, but off-base in that it fails to capture how people on these sites actually interact.

My art touches upon prevalent concepts in chan culture. The motifs and themes present in my art draw on ideas and memes in circulation to address my experience on these forums. This subject is essential to me because it has heavily impacted my worldview throughout my childhood and early adolescence.

On these boards, you use characters to represent yourself, so the subjects of my art reflect myself in this space. These personas are often more a representation of me as part of a group than just myself. However, my work is an examination of the subjective experience I’ve had with chan culture and is by no means representative of it as a whole.