Mortal Beauty
2021

These onsite large-scale installations and visceral experiences of butchered livestock carcasses confront detachment, existential fear, and alienation. These works emphasize texture, expression, and color to evoke mortality and the grotesque. Reflecting on the similarities of this concept of quasi-sacrificial slaughter, I construct macabre scenes that provoke complicity from the viewer to my own unsettled and dismissive attitude when deluged with violent imagery. Having been influenced by Francis Bacon’s gripping use of anatomy and Chaim Soutine’s expressive depictions of meat, along with the active and raw use of vivid color demonstrated by Hyman Bloom, I address the anxiety of powerlessness while also celebrating the mortal beauty of humanity that accompanies these transient cycles.