PROFESSIONAL PRACTICES (ART 399)

My photography and videography give light to dark lapses in my memory. Or perhaps my practice is a love letter to all the memories I have forgotten, whether on purpose or not. I am inspired to create works that fuse aspects of horror and beauty alongside the never-ending desire to partake in capturing stories of those around me and the characteristics of nostalgia that such events hold. The exploration of these concepts allows me to engage with the communities around me, while instilling them with a visual interpretation of my own heightened, internal experience of the situations. to aggrandize the situations, unknown to the viewer. With a background in theatre, I also tend to dip my toes into performance art whenever I get the chance. Nostalgia is a big part of what is included in my work, as I am unable to properly recall most situations I find myself in, due to depression and anxiety affecting my memory. The soft highlights and shadows alongside heightened saturation are my attempt to bring a dream-like quality memories seem to possess into both my video and photography pieces. Modern photographers that I take inspiration from include Chloe Sheppard, and Nguan. Both artists have a focus in film photography, and create serene works that include subjects and situations that they have either happened upon, or set up to be seemingly familiar, like long lost childhood friends or places that a viewer has a vague memory of. Also featured in both artists photography is a sense of beauty within the mundane, such as Nguan’s images of sides of buildings during sunset.Horror makes its appearance mostly in my videography work, ranging from bodily horror, tension building/suspense, and various subjects from the occult. My work in horror has given a chance for me to focus on more eerie subjects while deciding to make it either something beautiful or as disgusting as I see fit. The director I have been inspired by since before I can remember is Takashi Shimizu, creator of short films Katasumi and 4444444444, alongside the Ju-On series. His work is more reliant on suggesting the horrors he is showing, while focusing on both sound/the lack of and each specific location and its relation to the overall theme in regards to color or elements placed in the set. The goal for my BFA show would be to create a sort of separate world within the gallery itself. Within limits I would like to create sectioned areas to allow the viewer to stop and be fully immersed inside my constructed world. Within those sections would be photography/videography works alongside such objects that I have created that are featured inside to blur the lines of reality. Alongside these sectioned areas I would like to have both photography/videography be shown as if they were found artifacts in the world. I would like the works in the show to feature an array of students from our own art department due to this being the community I am always surrounded by, and to shine a light on the diversity in the art world in a creative way. I am also considering bringing my love for performance art into play by performing as a character from the world during the opening, and then perhaps asking the viewers to participate if they are willing