Artistic Statement

In The Responsible Object: A History of Design Ideology for the Future, Marjanne Van Helvert wonders “what would future archaeologists think of our time, if they were to dig in the places that used to house our civilization?” My current work starts at a similar place — with curiosity about the origin and speculation of the legacy of the technological objects around me. In technology, I see the hidden embodiments of ideas, beliefs, and worldviews — and I want to make them visible.

As a former designer, I have a long-standing connection to manufactured objects. During my design career, I aspired to make tools that were useful, delightful, intuitive, frictionless, sleek, and profitable. In hindsight, I see that I also imbued those tools with other things — a bias toward convenience and efficiency, a fetishization of the new, planned obsolescence, virality, and data extraction.

When I was a designer, I asked, how can I make technology useful? When I began making art, I asked, how can I make technology poetic? Today I ask, how can I make the ideology of technology visible? I love that I can use sensory-building installation to question the assumptions that underpin our economic, social, and political systems. I create works that elicit a visceral response in order to inspire wonder, provoke thought, or make our culpability more apparent.