ARTIST STATEMENT
In my new series The Word, I set out to mine the surfaces of contemporary society where words have lost meaning, making paintings on the reverse side of political and cultural posters taken from city streets in Berlin, Istanbul, Palermo, and New York City. Painstakingly cutting letters and fragments from this found material, I deconstruct to silence word and image. I then employ a range of archival materials to restore and reconfigure the pieces of debris into mixed media paintings that open up entirely new meanings. While intuitively building intricate patterns, I connect letters into image, all the while resisting the rational formation of words. Ultimately, moving among art historical references from Dada to Turkish tiles to William Blake, these works merge image and text into visceral materiality and patterns of disruptions that for me, form a series of tangible, silent protests.