Artist Statement
My thesis concerns the bond I have with my twin sister and my perception of family and home. I examine how these factors have developed throughout the course of my life and how I think about them now. Uncertainty as a theme is central to my work. Since I have lived apart from my sister, my family, and my home for the past two years, I ask- where does that leave us? What space do we occupy in each other’s lives? My home, as I knew it for the first 16 years of my life, no longer exists. I was not there to see it disappear. Where do I fit in this new family, that I have only ever been tangential to, a visitor passing through every so often but never staying for long? Though I try to answer these questions through the process of artmaking, I’ll never come up with all the answers.
Intertwined with the theme of uncertainty is the concept, and the question, of closeness. Twinship is often presented as the quintessential paragon of closeness, two people so in-tune with one another that they can almost read each other’s thoughts. However, there have always been facets of my sister’s identity that remained a mystery to me. Now more than ever, after the events of the past two years, she often feels like a stranger when I should theoretically know her better than anyone in the world. The process of making my work is in part, the process of discovering who she is, and who I am in relation to her.
I am drawn to both digital illustration and gouache paint due to the freedom those mediums give me to create intricate, detailed drawings and tell a story as clearly as possible. I enjoy the tactile nature of ceramics. Carefully building and molding a piece with my hands, imbues it with emotional weight and conveys ideas of physical connection and attachment. The result- an organic, imperfect object- evokes the human form without representing it directly. I am also drawn to ceramics because of their nature as actual physical objects. In the face of holding on to so many temporary things- my bond with my sister, my family, my home, the structure of my life- the immediacy and solidity of ceramics is comforting.
My artwork is unified through repeated visual motifs, such as the doubling/mirroring of figures to represent comparison, the use of physical body parts to represent exchange and sacrifice, and a pink/purple color palette that represents my sister and me, respectively- those were our favorite colors as children, and we used them to differentiate our belongings.
