My work functions in direct opposition to mainstream images that attempt to limit and normalize human experience. Instead of narrowing or categorizing identity, culture, or knowledge, my work seeks to disintegrate limits, re-imagine human agency, and defy simple resolutions to complex experiences.

In Family Tree, I contest the idea of the natural as something perfect, and find the imperfect to be the norm. The traditional family tree is always imaged as symmetrical, mature and strong. This stylized tree that has stood symbolically for family is unattainable, unreal, idealized to the point that it represents only one idea, one construction, and is an invention as much as it is a convention. I image trees that are sometimes strong and sturdy, sometimes torn, damaged, thorny, and struggling. Trees, limbs and leaves face the elements, suggesting a wide variety of metaphors for the lived experience of familial love and loss.