ARTIST STATEMENT

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My work examines how cultural and intergenerational conditioning shape gender expectations, positioning women as bodies within systems that constrain their visibility and agency. Working across sculpture, installation, and painting, I draw on my background as a storyteller to construct narrative-driven works that are personal and at times autobiographical, yet extend beyond my own experience. Unfolding across distinct series with a shared conceptual foundation, the work engages themes of mortality, fear, control, and resilience.

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My sculpture practice incorporates vintage found objects, particularly from childhood, alongside fabricated forms, often using idealized mannequin parts and clothing as stand-ins for the body, and as expressions of culturally constructed Western ideals of womanhood and appearance. Domestic objects, clothing, food, and corporeal fragments are employed for their cultural and psychological charge, becoming vehicles to examine identity, objectification, bodily autonomy, intergenerational imprint, and impermanence.

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My paintings move between eye-popping color and muted tonal palettes, as well as between expressive, frenetic works and quiet, controlled ones. These shifts operate symbolically, reflecting disparate parts of myself and oscillating between exposure and concealment, intensity and restraint.​ I sign my work Dagu, the name I called myself as a child, to honor my intuitive creative process and the value of childlike exploration.