Born – 1982, Providence Rhode Island
Current Residence – Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
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Personal Statement
I sat there thinking about the decision I was about to make. My father presented me with the question whether or not I wanted him in his life. He told me that I would have to make the decision and that it was my choice to continue our relationship together. At first I was confused why I had to be the one to make this, but as I thought more deeply about it, I realized my father did not want to have any more ties to his three sons.
My father left my mother, two brothers, and me when I was four years old. We were left with the house, but my mother worked three jobs to support us. She had no option but to leave her three sons with a babysitter to supervise, and my father legally forced to watch us on the weekends. As time passed, my mother needed time for herself, and we went to my father’s on the weekends. He had no intentions of having us stay with him, so we slept on the floor and played with his office supplies, while he watched the game on TV.
As we got older the conversation continued to stay the same, but now he remarried a woman I still have never met. We saw our relationship with him growing distant. My brothers retaliated with anger, refusing to visit and hating him for him leaving us. I was more curious about figuring out what role my father played in my life. He was a financial provider, paying child support to my mother and obligated to see us when we could not afford a babysitter. She always said it was the best interest that we see our father because he helped create us.
I was the first of my siblings to get accepted into college. I was unsure of what I wanted to do, so I spent the first two years feeling lost and deciding on a major. When I was in high school I excelled at art, but according to my father majoring in art and making it a career was a sissy path to follow. He told me I will never make money to support myself, and a wiser career in business or computer technology would get me a well paying job like he had done. Hoping to make my father happy, I majored in computer science.
I fell into a major depression after my first year of college; frustrated with my major, and wanting to take courses I was interested in. The first semester of my sophomore year I took an introduction to photography course that opened up my passion for art. I excelled quickly at the course. My professor saw talent and potential in me and asked why I had never done photography before. I explained my father’s reasons for not having art as a major. She encouraged me to take the second part of the class, and I fell in love with the medium. Finally feeling happy, I quickly switched to a fine arts degree,. The decision made it clear that I was going to continue with art regardless what my father thought.
Continuing to pursue the arts has opened up a true joy for me. Artistic and academic achievements led my junior and senior years of college, pushing me to the top of my class. My photography professor still continues to support my work since I have graduated, urging me to pursue my passion for the arts. The many supportive figures I have met along the way allowed me to transform my lack of self-confidence to a more assertive and self-assured artist. This determination led to my acceptance to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where I completed my Master’s degree. My father said I would never succeed as an artist, but I know I have made the decision that makes me happy. Every time I pick up the camera, or make any new artwork, I am constantly reassured this is the right decision I made and feel my fulfillment as an artist.
Artist Statement
The moment of realization has always engendered in me a combined sense of relief and clarity. Clarity in turn replaces tension that has previously arisen between one’s subjectivity and some aspect of the physical world. This process entails the acknowledgement of one’s self, decisions and actions in a moment of actualization, thus making the mind’s thoughts and processes manifest in reality. The struggle with or paradoxical nature of this process is, however, that the inherently subjective—or even introverted—way of processing ideas, fantasy and desire that had previously been kept within the realm of the mind nevertheless persist—a constant potentiality. Despite these moments of clarity, fantasy never really becomes reality, and reality can never be made as real as one might prefer, due precisely to the persistent fantasy and desire that holds the subjective mind endlessly captive.
An example of this moment of realization paired with actualization is the process of coming out: revealing, enunciating one’s sexuality. After hiding who you are, often after a significant period of time, the acceptance associated with the act of “outing” yourself allows for actualizing certain aspects of one’s personal identity and system of identification. Nevertheless, an act of revelation-cum-revealing such as “coming out” also constitutes a constant battle or game with the self and the outside world. I am principally preoccupied with this process of perpetual negotiation that must necessarily follow an act of actualization and enunciation. My own experiences and those of many other gay men speak to this complex phenomenon. Fantasy and attendant desire thus constitute a back-and-forth, a struggle between mind and reality. What one imagines and formulates in fantasy never finds full expression in the physical world. I understand this constellation as a constant “outing” of the self. Words are never properly spoken; actions exist within the mind; fantasy never turns fully into reality. The constant struggle is akin to mental masturbation. Fantasy trumps rational thought, while desires beyond the moment of initial enunciation are kept on the inside. The eye—the gaze—may wander from object to object, but sexual desires deceive perception, tricking the mind into thinking desire correlates to reality.
Over the course of my career thus far, I have created a series of artworks that engage with these topics. Many ideas circling sex, fantasy, men, life, culture are all kept within in my mind and what I seek and yearn to have in reality. Photographing men and recreating mental imagery within my mind, from a distance behind the camera lens, I recreate the scenarios over and over again, but never experience the actuality of the corresponding mental image. The photograph, the object to be observed and consumed, is an index of my desire, but not the actual physical realization of said desire. It bears repeating: I can document my own desire, but am necessarily confronted with the paradox of never quite attaining what I imagine or fantasize. The men, the memories, fabrications pushed into the frame of the image for others to see, to grasp onto; yet no one really knows what I specifically desire. It is all kept secret, within my mind and my own frame of reference, as a conversation with myself. My work, a metonymy gesturing toward this an act of revelation, can offer fragments, can depict what I want, but am perhaps too afraid to have. The process of actualization thus may have a definitive beginning, but no discrete end.
My current work explores questions related to (self-) actualization as a process in perpetuity—a story with a trajectory, but without a clear conclusion. I am investigating the intersections of memory and reality, contemplating how memory informs our view of reality. My work investigates how these fabrications—these lusts and desires—determine how we visually interpret and perform reality. Most stories and histories have fabrications, alterations, and information left out, to guide the audience in a direction parallel to the narrator’s perspective. These issues also bring up the existential question regarding the existence of a correct or even ethical way of saying (enunciating) and living. How do enunciation and personal responsibility stand in relationship to one another? We live according to the thirsts of our own personal sense of indulgence and strive to be heard. My work meditates upon this fundamental disparity between how our fantasies push us forward—leading us to grasp for what we hold to be true—and the fear, the underlying suspicion that our expectations will never actually be met.
Teaching Philosophy
I am a practicing artist, and my teaching philosophy is inextricably bound to my understanding of the artist as a figure who cultivates a nuanced perspective, taking into account both personal history and subjectivity, as well as society and culture. This perspective must take into account technology, philosophy, critical theory, social movements, and cultural change in both the United States and throughout the world. The contemporary artist serves as an interpreter of various media, communicating complex ideas and providing intellectual stimulation to the public.
As such, today’s artist is a well-rounded individual, focusing on both academic achievement and artworks based on an array of visual media. Artists have become scholars and researchers, employing, for example, aesthetic, anthropological, sociological, and mathematical theories, in working to uncover and articulate how we function as social beings. The multifaceted approach I employ in my own work provides a bridge to my philosophy as an instructor. Instructors who teach art and artists must understand their students’ passions and interests in a variety of media—both traditional and emerging. My emphasis as an educator is on stimulating my students’ development by introducing them to new ideas, artworks from a range of periods, and innovative uses of technology. As a mediator in the classroom, I strive to help students discover how their interests and ideas can be expressed with their art. I interact with my students as much as possible, encouraging them to explore what preoccupies them.
Coinciding with my role as mediator, I also focus on articulation and mentoring, with the goal of cultivating a positive and productive educational environment. I strive to help students explore and explain their nascent ideas within the community of the classroom. Through exercises and discussions, I aim to introduce a discourse through which students acquire the vocabulary and technical skills necessary for expressing concepts, ideas, and theories. As a mentor, I aim to support the overall process by which my students come into their own as artists, thinkers and communicators. In this capacity, I also remind young artists that they need not simply be commodities, but may also function as influential figures performing their own mediation of the world around them.