All of the artwork in Event Horizon are representations of personal thoughts on how the racial constructs of American society would react when confronted with the confirmed existence of extraterrestrial life (specifically, civilizations on other planets). While reflecting on that confrontation, parallels to contemporary manifestations in American society of Othering, and the experience of a loved one with vestibular schwannomas and neurofibromatosis appeared to reveal themselves. Those apparent parallels facilitated the creation of a fictional narrative, and out of that narrative aesthetic and conceptual threads flowed to connect all of the individual artworks to each other.
Some of the threads: motivation and/or desires of extraterrestrial intelligence for contacting humanity found in the novel Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, disembodiment of Black Americans illustrated in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Others (from Husserl), ufology, the juxtaposition of archaic and contemporary technology, imagery of eyes and ears, mold making and casting as a creative process, A = B B = C C = A.
Event Horizon exhibited at Swanson Contemporary, October 2018