My artwork explores the tension between authentic identity and performative expectations shaped by my personal relationships, cultural beauty standards, and social roles. I am interested in how identity is constructed, remembered, and often performed—whether through intimate connections, social milestones, or everyday interactions. Inspired by theatrical architecture and the visual language of circuses, I approach my exhibition as a stage, a place where illusion and reality coexist. I create immersive installations using fibers, lighting, and digital media, incorporating draped curtains, painted backdrops, and projection to heighten a sense of drama and spectacle. These elements allow me to put my videography at the forefront, transforming the space into something both intimate and performative.
For the installation, I used greys, blacks, and whites within the draped fabrics to create a strong visual atmosphere. This choice emphasizes contrast, structure, and mood within the physical space, allowing the videos themselves to exist distinctly while still being held within a cohesive environment. This body of work is a collection of three films that reflect different layers of my identity and experience. The Garden examines societal gender roles and expectations, drawing from the symbolism of Adam and Eve to question how these standards are imposed and internalized. It shows how black and white our expectations and norms are for men and women. At the end of the video, they break through the norms, now able to don a new way to express themselves. How I'm feeling right now focuses on my current experience as a teenager in America, capturing the uncertainty, pressure, and constant self-awareness that define this moment in my life. Scars is the most personal work, exploring my struggle with vulnerability, my difficulty opening up, and the challenge of forming genuine human connections.
Through my process, I build layered environments that mimic performance spaces, using projection and video to suggest that identity is fluid, fragile, and constantly shifting. By placing my own experiences within these staged, theatrical worlds, I highlight how the expectations projected onto me, especially as a male teenager, can feel both overwhelming and inescapable. Ultimately, my work invites viewers to question where authenticity ends and performance begins and to consider how much of who we are is truly our own.
