I SEE YOU EXHIBITION
April 2020 - Abilene, TX - Center for Contemporary Arts
For this exhibition, my goal is to break the illusion of what our society believes to be perfect, by exposing imperfect, unattractive people and situations. I want my work to cause my audience to face the uncomfortable fact of what takes place in real life, instead of ignoring it and living life blindly.
With this goal in mind, I painted models to represent women who are struggling and feel unnoticed or ignored. Each painting represents a different story and I have placed parts of my face over the model’s, to place myself in their shoes. I want to encourage others to do the same. I have also painted each figure looking straight at the audience as a representation of vulnerability and confrontation.
I believe art is one of the greatest forms of communication. It goes beyond written languages, and communicates feeling and expression. Art is also a great way of storytelling. It makes people aware of the human condition in significant ways and can impact not only the artist, but the audience as well. For example, the world is full of impossibly high expectations, manipulating us to fall into the endless cycle of believing in and working to achieve something that is unreachable. This causes us to become blind to all the things that people wish did not exist. I struggle with this myself, so I want to paint these uncomfortable things, to force myself to come in contact with them. I want to emphasize the hypocrisy that exists in me, through my work, with the hope that this will not only open the eyes of others, but for myself as well.