When I first got to the University of Oregon, my work was heavily geared toward race, gender, and identity based on my social interactions with others.  However, I reached a point in my first year where I wanted to take a break from this very heavy and overbearing topic as I felt stuck in the topic and didn't know how to navigate it. I began to shift my practice to investigate the materiality of a photograph and the material the artist chooses to use in a picture. The project featured here is currently a work in progress and is moving towards being my main thesis project for grad school at the University of Oregon. When I decided to take a break from race, gender, and identity, I began experimenting with common materials like tin foil and physical photos. Throughout the year, I have explored ways to manipulate tin foil and create a new material that reacts to light and/or shadows. Starting these experiments led me in a few different directions of thinking about light, representation of planes, and depth perception. When doing this type of research, I ask myself questions about the material. 

 

• How far can I push it to where it can't be recognizable?

• How far can I push light and shadow?

• How can I play with space?

 

 Asking myself these questions allows me to play with different variables and create different pictures. The pictures transform into a new medium I can reuse in the future. I'm taking a picture of a picture and thinking about what constitutes a picture and how far I can play with all these variables. My work also bounces back and forth between analog and digital. With this current project, I blend physical photos, digital photographs, and digital projections all in one place to create a new picture. From there, I then capture that as a new image creating an entirely new perspective based on photos I've reconstructed or overlayed over another. I'm interested in combining different elements, like the projection of physical photos and sculptures, and seeing how they interact with each other. My goal for this project is to continue experimenting and see how far I can push a physical photo.