Most people spend at least a little time each day on their appearance. They may take great comfort in the particular sweater they choose for that day, or pride in the unique (and possibly expensive) sneakers they slip on over the quirky, maybe intentionally mismatched or garishly-patterned socks, or even a sense of safety in a particular shade of lipstick. It means there is a connection between their inner sense of self and their outer presentation, one in which they have some amount of power to direct. But identity is not only a presentation of self: it is also a locus of control.

The sites of this struggle constantly shift, from the clothes that one puts on and the place where one puts down roots, to the very words that one speaks and images one puts out there. My work may thus be construed as an examination of these sites, and as a search for wiggle room, a yearning for freedom from control, both from within and from without, of those identity-shields with which we cover ourselves.

I typically use ordinary items of consumer technology as the common denominators of our personal environments: cell phones, the media that we consume and produce, the media that consumes us and produces us. Misusing them, re-writing them, and sometimes just pointing them out is a way of questioning the attitudes, fears, and unwritten rules which have formed that environment and our behavior within it.

One area of current research centers on the notion that a sentient intelligence, an AI, may have arisen within my home network. It is a common trope in science fiction that I use as a device to engage questions of identity and control. What if that intelligence — raised amid my data, my files, my texts, my images, my financial information — believes itself to be me and then begins operating as me, making posts, sending emails and texts, even making art?

This narrative is the framework for a body of work that includes handmade books, linocut prints, sculptures, and now even paintings. These objects serve as its translated memories and flawed biography, materializing a core question of this practice: At what point does the data that identifies us cease to be ours? When does it not only escape our control but begin to control us?