
Artist Statement: Fragments
This series of wearable sculptures, titled Fragments, is influenced by recent unsettling political unrest that has led to a decline of diversity and culture. In the last several years, this deterioration has been manifested at home and abroad both verbally, through increasingly polarizing rhetoric of intolerance and prejudice, as well as physically through intentional xenophobic influenced damage, destruction, and violence.
This destructive decline of diversity and culture is represented visually in these works through the utilization of forms that appear to be fractured, broken, and isolated fragments of something that was once visually prominent and culturally meaningful. To highlight what is lost with prejudice and intolerance, I've created patterns on the surface of each of these pieces that are designed to be visually striking and have been created utilizing traditional metalsmithing techniques, such as enameling, damascene, and marriage of metals, that have roots in many cultures.
Each patterned and fragmented metal piece has been backed with cement and incorporates hand-crafted, small-scale renditions of protruding infrastructure remnants, which are designed to appear as though these pieces have been pulled from rubble. This juxtaposition of destruction and beauty visually presented in the work is meant to encourage discussions and awareness of both the subtle and overt ways cultural intolerance is manifested as well as hope for constructive change.