About

I’m an interdisciplinary artist, currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

My art practice and research are preoccupied with language and semiotics. This emerges in part from my experiences with dyslexia, and of the frustrations and humiliations of misunderstanding and being misunderstood. I am intimidated by, and enamored with, the power and vulnerability of words. Words are slippery and inadequate containers for truth, which is always nuanced, multiple, malleable, and messy. Influenced by Dian Million’s Felt Theory, and bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, I pursue alternative forms of language that transcend colonial and patriarchal limitations and hierarchies. I am interested in the expanse of what language and semiotics are and can be, spanning ecologies, mental health and neurodivergence, and sociodynamics such as power, play, intimacy, and felt experiences. Three primary tenets encompass the focus and methodology of my art practice and research: The Language of the Body, The Language of Materiality, and The Language of Play. 

Kathy Acker describes The Language of the Body as a “[rejection of] ordinary language and yet itself constitutes a language, a method for understanding and controlling the physical which in this case is also the self”. I am interested in this pursuit of the impossible – to externalize and translate the ineffable language of the body and our individual sensory experiences into felt experiences for and with others. Practices of swimming and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy are central to this embodied research. When I swim, I research the elusive archives of my body. I am talking in a secret language with myself – a language that I forget how to speak when I leave the water. EMDR is a form of psychotherapy that relies on bilateral stimulation (through light, sound, and/or vibration) to process and heal traumatic memories. I’m curious about what else might dwell in the slippery, peripheral landscapes of our psyches, and how we might access and benefit from them. 

To facilitate embodied, visceral understanding of such inner dialogues, I rely on The Language of Materiality. I utilize digital tools to make works that are interactive, kinetic, and time-based, with the intent to directly address, engage and involve the viewer. I couple this with hand-made objects and performative acts, text, and installation, in order to offer something of myself to those who generously engage with my work. Through interdisciplinary material explorations, I strive to create a sensorial dissonance that speaks to the impossibility of absolute translation. 

The Language of Play allows the space for such mistranslations to be generative, and for new languages to be created. Play is the essential language through which we learn. It structures our reality, our sense of place, and our relationships. It is at once an incubator for serious thought, and fertile ground for unexpected discoveries. My work emerges through the sustained time, space, and attention that play requires. Playful iterations are central to the research and development of my artwork, which comes into being not through refinement, but through layering, like a poem. 

Donna Haraway describes world-building as the “patterning of possible worlds”. I believe that art, at its best, creates blueprints for better worlds, and often builds them. By manipulating, bending, and pushing the boundaries of normative language, and creating new methods of meaning making, I hope to contribute in some small way to this “patterning”.