My work seeks to explore the intimate connections between seemingly orthogonal subjects. I am deeply fascinated by this interweaving, found in subjects like religious syncretism, heteroglossia, pastiche, and other forms of artistic, cultural, and scientific cross-pollination.
For example, my 2020 “Mythos” series delved into the parallels found between the lore of divine, “mythological” beings and the lives of suburban twenty-somethings. Using a specific piece as an example, my painting “Prometheus” features a young Black male bearing a phone with a fire emoji in his hand, tangentially representing the Greek titan Prometheus and his quest to give the fire of the gods to mankind. This “fire” smartphone is a double entendre, representing the promise and peril of contemporary technology. Many find multiple meanings in the painting, perceiving the young subject as “an exhausted Tinder user”, for example.
My short 2023 “Surveillance” series featured the piece “Shackled By Light” wherein an enslaved Black man carries a crudely drawn oil lantern. This piece was inspired by a talk by the artist Kapwani Kiwanga at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, where she spoke of “lantern laws” requiring enslaved Black people to carry lanterns after dark when not in the presence of a white person. Coupled with the two other pieces in the series, “Cerberus” and “Get Thee Behind Me”, which featured more contemporary subjects, the body of work seeks to “shed light” on the evolution of the surveillance state since the 17th century and what it may look like in the future.
My current thesis series, titled “Floating World”, is a bricolage of American military culture and feudal-to-contemporary Japanese aesthetics. Ever since enlisting in the Army, and even after I finished my service, I’ve considered the cognates between the “warrior classes” of contemporary America and feudal Japan. In both instances, talented and ambitious members of the lower classes can display exceptional “warrior” skills and gain favor, augmenting their class and social capital in the process.
Most of all, my artwork seeks to challenge viewers and expose them to alternate perspectives and ways of thinking. Many of the best professors I’ve met at Harvard University were adept at eviscerating students’ urges to take seemingly straightforward things for granted, fostering greater instincts for creativity and innovation in the process.