Artists Against the Bomb opens Friday, October 16, 2026.
Artists Against the Bomb opens Friday, October 16, 2026.
Interview featured in the Fall 2024 UMOCA Newsletter. Subscribe here.
Can you talk a bit about your background and what brought you to the UMOCA Residency?
I’m a recent transplant to Utah. I’m originally from New York City and despite attending both undergrad and graduate school on the East Coast, I’ve done a fair amount of traveling across North America. I have always enjoyed the openness of the Western United States. During the pandemic, I relocated to Utah in order to find more space, both in a literal and metaphoric sense. I moved to Salt Lake City and learned soon after about the A.I.R. program at UMOCA. My time as a resident here has afforded me the opportunity to prioritize my studio work.
Can you talk a bit about the trajectory of your residency here at UMOCA? Where did you start and where are you now?
Early on during my residency, I became interested in the Victorian language of flowers: a cipher for messages that, by the moral standards of that time, were deemed too crass to verbalize directly to another person. In nineteenth-century England, presenting someone with a bouquet of flowers could indicate a specific message as long as the recipient was savvy enough to pick up on the subtleties of the choices being made. Nettle and Oleander blooms, for example, would serve as a warning to someone that a betrayal had been discovered. The inclusion of Petunias in the bouquet added another wrinkle to the message, communicating to the recipient that an apology for their transgressions would be deemed insincere.
I expanded upon some of these ideas and created a series of cyanotype prints. Cyanotypes also came about during the nineteenth-century, and to this day, have a strong association with scientific veracity as well as the generally-accepted belief that photographs tend to communicate objective truths. I was interested in using this outmoded photographic process to subvert or play with a viewer’s expectations.
Can you talk about the role of archival material in your work and how it operates in this show in particular?
Online and physical archives of images are very accessible in our present moment, much more so than in any past. As an artist, I’ve often found that there’s no need to generate new images in order to make work. The thing about working with found images is that they come with their own history. That history can be iconic as well as personal. For example, consider a hypothetical photograph that was taken of you at your sixth birthday party; a “happy birthday” sign is hanging up on the wall behind you; numbered candles have been placed on the chocolate cake that’s sitting on the table in front of you. There is a generic, universal, even cliché, quality to such an image, but looking at that younger version of yourself in that family photograph, of course you would absolutely have specific memories of that moment in time that aren’t represented anywhere within the picture. My current show at UMOCA consists of a body of work that has moved away from the explicit use of archival images as source material. In other words, the subject matter has largely been generated by me.
Can you talk about your decision to use the soap opera as a form in the show? What drew you to that format, and how does it function in this body of work?
I first began watching soap operas in mid-2020, at first out of boredom, then because I actually became engrossed–but not for the reasons you might expect. As a form, soap operas have a truly weird relationship with the viewing audience at home. They act as a funhouse mirror for reality. The daytime soap is a storytelling medium that has no beginning or end. No one will ever watch every episode of Days of Our Lives.
Viewers age along with the actors. Milestones are celebrated on the television screen and in the viewer’s home. One can easily recognize oneself in a soap opera. A casual viewer can dip in and out and not miss much at all; there’s always an opportunity to catch up with a dear friend down the road, even if that friend is a fictional character. Most episodes are basically the same with slight variations in content. Viewers, casual or devoted, can usually anticipate plot developments long before they happen on the screen. It’s all very legible.
What do you hope visitors take away from the exhibition?
As an artist, I often look for merit in undervalued things. I want viewers to pay close attention to the subtleties around them that often go overlooked. Perhaps a visitor to my exhibition will be inspired to look more closely at natural elements that they encounter, or even at themselves. Daytime soaps are often considered to be a trashy or base medium. Despite the ridiculous plot lines, and typical subpar acting performances, “tv stories” carry real emotional resonance and foster a genuine connection with the audience watching at home.
What’s on the horizon for you as an artist?
My time at UMOCA has been generative. I see my exhibition both as the culmination of my time working in the studio over the past year and also as a starting point. I plan to take the ideas presented within my UMOCA exhibition and develop those into new bodies of work that have not yet seen the light of day: an animation, a wallpaper project, a photo series that involves documenting tabletop miniatures I’ve constructed. I have settled into life in Salt Lake, and I look forward to continuing to connect with members of the art community here.
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