artist’s statement

My work examines how certain elements within popular culture trigger complex emotional states such as anticipation, awe, or obsessive and delusional behaviour. At its core is the elusive nature of happiness, and how the commercialization of desire through music and popular culture can create an inflated sense of expectation and a distorted sense of self. Through the interplay of text, video, sound and image, I mimic and parody this sense of idealism, and conversely, evoke the pathos or banality that lies therein. Central to the work is the tension and conflict I feel between an intellectual drive to be critical of these forces, and an emotional desire to still be swept away by it all. Ultimately, my work reflects upon the psychological cycle propelled by anxiety and promise, failure and hope. Over the past few years, my work has focused on the relationship between rock music and fandom, and in particular, my own ambivalent relationship to the role I play as its critic and consumer. I wish to question its mythical nature while simultaneously magnifying elements that may otherwise remain hidden, such as the vulnerability, excitement, and shame that accompany our conscious or unconscious desires, and our futile or doomed pursuits.

Dans mon travail, j’explore la façon dont certains éléments de la culture populaire déclenchent des états émotifs comme l’excitation, la crainte, l’obsession et les convictions illusoires. Par la vidéo, le son et l’installation, j’imite et je parodie l’idéalisation de la culture populaire tout en évoquant le pathos ou la banalité qui l’habite. Surtout, je cherche à invoquer l’excès émotionnel par une économie de moyens afin de mettre au jour la tension psychologique qui existe entre le rationnel et l’émotif, entre une propension intellectuelle à être critique des forces de la culture populaire et un désir émotif de partager ses mythologies.