Todos somos iguales. Todos somos diferentes. We are all the same. We are all different. It is easy to see that which separates us, for example: religion, cultural/national borders, life experience, and notions of personal identity. However, the more and more I come to know the world and its people, the more and more I find common ground on which we can all stand. Understanding and misunderstanding: these ideas are essential to the pursuit of empathy—and by extension, empathy is essential to my work. When I travel to a new place I attempt to immerse myself completely in the culture and its people so as to understand. When I create my work I try and access a similar mindset in regards to people, especially those who are poor and marginalized.
Through process, objects, and performance I try and understand the human condition as best as I can. I create scenes and environments that are alien, almost shocking, to me and my Midwestern surroundings. At the same time, these images are seen as commonplace elsewhere in the world. Through this juxtaposition of the expected and the unexpected, ideas of poverty, struggle, and suffering invade a world consumed by Blackberry beeps and beckoning to-do lists.
Misunderstanding could be the most human notion I experience. I can speak the language or dress in the colloquial clothing of an area, but a part of me knows I do not belong. True empathy is always beyond my reach. At any moment I can quit, I can return to my normal diet, my normal clothes, or native tongue. I can return to my life. However, the things we do share, like love, desire, and struggle, the qualities that make us human, root deeper in the earth and reach higher in the sky than the boundaries that we construct.
Todos somos iguales. Todos somos diferentes.
