ARTIST STATEMENT
I find it crucial that new technologies are used meaningfully and reinvented in the process. They can be both tools as well as frameworks for thinking about our existing world and bodies as they become more digital, virtual, and augmented. I use them to examine, critique, and subvert misunderstood marginalized experiences, particularly during this period of extreme turbulence when physical borders between lands are constantly being disputed. I recognize identity discourses as pivotal in theorizing the development and implementation of digital spaces that continue to defy political, social, and/or cultural conventions around emigration, immigration, and migration. I explore the depths of this universal yet intimate experience as it manifests itself in social and economic inequalities and hostile minority representation. I work to resolve the constant debates over who should get to stay and who should not, both in the abstract and in the literal sense of our borders.
Using my background as a graphic and interaction designer, I conduct design research in the gallery that engages viewers with new and emerging technology. By unraveling the limbo between departing and arriving, I discuss the cumbersome and sometimes inhumane process of legal immigration, its costs, benefits, and other ripples. A combination of digital and interactive media is used in my work, some of which are exhibited on headsets, computers, mobile screens and others on the gallery walls. In some of my projects, users must navigate a surrealist environment to find their way, while in others, they can be still, and contemplative.