ARTIST STATEMENT

I think of my art is an expression of the affects and facets of indigeneity, colonialism, and surrounding environments. Due to my anthropology background, even when creating art, I often find myself identifying and (over)analyzing various aspects of my identity, life experiences, and environments. Mainly, I end up worrying a lot about Indigenous representation and its affects. What Indigenous tropes are being reproduced in this?  How might this shaped one's identity-making process? Why is traditional performativity often privileged over multicultural, contemporary realities? And how can I make more space for identities and experiences like mine, an urban, mixed native? While I am currently working on answering many of those questions through my own academic research and scholarship, I also want to prioritize more personal and creative efforts (ones that don't require several dozen citations) that speak to my own Indigenous reality.

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Though each art piece represents a unique experience, theme, or idea, there are a few stylistic choices that are common throughout each painting. Inspired by popularized Cree and Ojibwe artists, characters are often given yellow eyes to represent my own Indigenous being/existence/embodiments. I then integrate/mix/distort these key stylistics with my own elements of high contrast lighting and textures. Most importantly, I aim to challenge dominate Indigenous representation that situates natives as of a rural existence, deep in the past. This is often done through including a variety of aesthetic details. Thus, through all my art and its distinctive elements, I aim to contribute to the expansion and diversifying of contemporary Indigenous representation in public worlds.