ARTIST STATEMENT

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My practice explores the human condition through a feminist lens. Unfolding across distinct series that share a cohesive conceptual foundation, the work engages themes of mortality, visibility, fear, control, and resilience.

My sculpture practice incorporates vintage found objects, particularly from childhood, alongside fabricated forms, frequently using idealized mannequin parts as stand-ins for the body and for culturally constructed, normative Western ideals of womanhood and female appearance. Domestic objects, clothing, food, and corporeal fragments are employed for their cultural and psychological charge, becoming vehicles to examine gender identity and expectations, objectification, bodily autonomy, intergenerational imprint, and impermanence. The work is deeply personal, and often autobiographical, examining childhood feminist identity and expression, ambition, and fear.

Grounded in figuration, my paintings move deliberately 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 process and the value of childlike exploration.​