Desired Part II

This project continues to explore the emotional cycles of wanting, buying, and having, all rituals that define and build up contemporary consumer culture. I am interested in how objects, from luxury jewelry to fast-fashion basics, carry a kind of seductive promise of fulfillment, identity, and happiness, while the actual experience of consumption is often excessive, overwhelming, and disappointing.

I am not entirely critical of this system. In fact, I am a part of it. I love shopping, and I love spending money. Buying things makes me feel good. Yet, that pleasure is complicated. Consumption drains us psychologically, emotionally, and ecologically. It is beautiful, addictive, and almost out of control. My work sits inside this contradiction rather than outside it. Compositions stacked with an abundance of goods help illustrate the sensory excess of this culture. This project asks viewers to consider their own relationship to desire: what do we seek in our purchases: fulfillment, identity, reassurance, or escape? And at what point does consumption stop serving and start consuming us? By lingering on surfaces we chase, I hope this project hold a space of ambivalence where admiration and critique coexist, where beauty and overabundance become indistinguishable.