Wishful Thinking
What'd You Wish For?
Graphite on mixed media paper 18 x 24 2022 |
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
Graphite on Arches paper 22 x 30 2022 |
Wishful Thinking explores identity construction and the nuances of gender performativity in girlhood subcultures. Taking inspiration from AI text-to-image generators, memes, and Gen Z humor, this series of graphite drawings portray exaggerated moments of my own girlhood using a multitude of reference images I’ve compiled from the internet and manipulated in Photoshop.
The drawings show female subjects playing out the rituals of a mainstream culture they simultaneously consume and create. They are essentially media-assemblages, meant to emulate my own experience of being a girl in the age of the internet where mass media representations are transmitted rapidly everyday. Having to constantly negotiate with the societal rules, regulations, and fictitious parameters set around my gender results in a confused sense of self, and a desire for some form of control. Although the girls in the drawings are packed into a room like it’s a container, they exert pleasure, curiosity, and uncertainty through mess-making and collective imagination. Birthday wishes and levitation games become sites for magical thinking to manifest into action, posing a potential for these girls’ transcendence beyond their current state.
The drawings show female subjects playing out the rituals of a mainstream culture they simultaneously consume and create. They are essentially media-assemblages, meant to emulate my own experience of being a girl in the age of the internet where mass media representations are transmitted rapidly everyday. Having to constantly negotiate with the societal rules, regulations, and fictitious parameters set around my gender results in a confused sense of self, and a desire for some form of control. Although the girls in the drawings are packed into a room like it’s a container, they exert pleasure, curiosity, and uncertainty through mess-making and collective imagination. Birthday wishes and levitation games become sites for magical thinking to manifest into action, posing a potential for these girls’ transcendence beyond their current state.