Self-Portraits and Other Stories

Artist Statement

The human mind sees the world through story. We are insatiable for narratives, consuming them in every medium possible and reading them into real life events. When we ask “why?”, we are much more likely to accept an answer that makes sense narratively than logically. And as we go through our lives, we often use stories to define us, shaping ourselves around a narrative, finding comfort in a template whether it fits us or not.

I have always been a big reader. From a very young age, I devoured science fiction, fantasy, horror, and superhero comics as fast as I could get my hands on them. To me, one of the great powers of genre fiction is metaphor. Spaceships are rarely just spaceships, magic is almost never just magic, and the way a world is constructed almost always reflects on the author’s ideas about our own world. Taking a step away from our reality can allow one to communicate ideas and experiences more directly and powerfully, while sidestepping many preconceived notions from the reader about those real-world ideas.

This show is a surrealist autobiography and an attempt to use the lies of genre fiction to tell an emotional truth. It is a chronicle of the tension between my internal and external selves, and an attempt to reckon with stories about myself I thought I had to believe. This is a portion of my life as I understand it. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it makes you a little uncomfortable. I hope you ask yourself why.