Series
Our Story
Our Story is a series that explores shared experiences of masks and masking, aiming to reveal a universal experience among a diversity of people living vastly different lives. In an increasingly divisive world, this series aims to reveal our fundamental shared humanity. Each work comprises two sibling pieces incorporating personal stories and portraits alongside the discarded ghost-like mask. Through these works, I am questioning why so many of us feel compelled to construct curated, idealised versions of ourselves (“personas”) that we present to the world, hiding our true inner self. Who is the mask for? Is it a useful tool, or constructed by and for the benefit of others? To what degree are our experiences and identities shaped by the expectations of others versus our own lived truths? The prints in Our Story are stone lithographs, for which I create my imagery using heritage limestones bearing their own unique histories, scars and imperfections, mirroring the perceived imperfections we hope to hide behind our masks. Starting with my own personal stories, the series expands to encompass those of others, curating a compendium of shared human narratives across geography, time, and disparate personal identities and lived experiences.
Unmasked
Unmasked is a hopeful series that envisions a world in which we all feel free to live true to our inner self without curating socially conforming versions of ourselves through the “masks” we present to the world. In Unmasked I bring to life an idealised reality in which queer people are free to shun the masculine ideal, in which neurodivergent people no longer feel compelled to edit their thoughts and behaviours, and in which we are all free to reveal our true self. The series comprises stone lithographs and mokuhanga prints (water-based woodblock prints). Through stone lithography, I have strived to reveal the hidden “flaws” within the limestones I work with to create the final artwork. The unique veins, textures, chips and scratch marks left behind through the processing of the stone surface mirror the imperfections we see within ourselves and try to hide from world. My mokuhanga prints incorporate natural inks and pigments that bring to mind an ancestral natural origin state that we all share. Unmasked asks us to envisage and create a future in which our self-perceived imperfections and flaws are celebrated as integral parts of our fully revealed natural selves.
Mask
In Mask I am exploring the curated versions of ourselves that we all present to the world, and how these “masks” relate to our inner private experience. I am questioning where the mask ends and where the person beneath begins, and which version more truthfully reflects who we are. I started working on this series before, during and after realising in my late thirties that I am neurodivergent as I began to untangle whether and how I present a mask to the world, and who I am without that mask. I have since expanded the series to reflect on the masks I fluidly exchange as a queer person with a multicultural background moving between cultures, spaces and social situations. Mask encompasses mixed media woodcut and lithography (mokulito) prints that sometimes include elements of collage. The prints incorporate natural and foraged pigments as a nod to our shared origins in (and ultimate return to) nature, reminding us that there is an original innocent self that existed before we started constructing our masks, which we have the agency to rediscover and reveal. I often work with pigments like coal and rust that undergo transformations in the same way that we are transformed by the masks we wear.
