Being an artist today means considering the totality of art history and using it as a metaphor of the complexities of human life and society. In a time defined by intersectionality and social division across identities, we have an opportunity to give authentic form to what it means to be alive today. Art is the practice of people positioning themselves within history and giving form to what that specific position accesses.
From that perspective, I think of art history as a mosaic image of the story of human life across time, where each tile is an individual artist’s practice that shows us the priorities and perspectives of their specific identity. The larger image formed by this mosaic points to who we are as a society and as a world. Being an artist today means distilling what we, as a collective humanity have been and who we are now.