project statement
I’m searching for “dirt”— the digital image that has fallen in the crack, lying between worlds. These outliers reveal the system from which they’ve been rejected, their relevance deemed marginal at best. We look to the Internet to show us the world, but it tends to lead us further from truth. I like telling what some would call lies, and I'm unconvinced that this distinction matters. The images I’ve excavated from an online landscape resist categorization, creating an erratic assemblage of their own. Within the archive, the photoshopped image blends in; it materializes. It is just as real as any other. Looking at our image-world from the outside of it, we reveal its bounds, or lack-thereof. Everything means what I say it means. Or, what you say it means. Seeing how our realities differ reveals an in-between that questions both our logic. Fragments of inner thoughts and confessions lie at the core of the work. It is this communication at the center, that won’t hold.
*Artist Talk, UTC BFA Senior Exhibition 2024*