This Is My Body (2024) comments on Catholic justifications for violence by presenting a gruesome inversion of the typical Transubstantiation. Over the duration of the week-long installation, the “blood” drips and drains from the I.V. bags into a suspended basin made of bible pages layered between bedsheets. After filtering through The Word, the drips fall into a chalice from a local church, splattering onto the surrounding communion wafers and eventually overflowing. Wrapped around the edges of the tarp below are plaster replicas of the artist’s hands — mangled, stained, and hardly recognizable under layers of translucent plastic.
As seen in “You Are Now The Host” at the Yale School of Art Gallery, April 2024.
The Sacred Heart (2023) uses my scribbled notes while reading Maggie Nelson's Bluets and an archival photo print of a man's heart with a bullet wound, with acrylic paint splatters in primary red and blue.
The Body (2022) is made from steel and yarn and comments on how corporate interests have reformed the church. Engraved is the book of Genesis, except (nearly) all of the nouns are replaced with the names of companies that the HRC has identified to be donating to anti-LGBT organizations — mostly conversion therapy initiatives.
The Conversion (2021) is made with white sketching crayon and black paper, inspired by the stories of people who have survived the hell of conversion therapy camps.
I had never picked up a brush before the summer of 2022 but decided to try and learn. These are my two favorite works from that adventure.