#hellbent | 2016

#hellbent represents my first exhibition and is a studio-made body of work constructed from thrift-bin finds, repurposed objects, and everyday household items — reassembled to amplify a theme of domestic terror.

The project began with an image of being stuck flipping through a magazine while in the waiting room for hell, awaiting damnation, while being sold a candy-colored purgatory.

The intention was to create a fever dream hovering just shy of nightmare, a place that isn’t wholly unpleasant but remains completely off-kilter.

Drawing from images burned into memory from childhood, the work recontextualizes the familiar to meet present-day anxieties.

Visually, the work traces a tonal shift from the rush of a sugar high to its crash, bright candy hues souring into Pepto-pinks and gilded puke-greens.

Comfort curdles into nausea: a television turned slightly too loud, blaring unbroken coverage of war and failed systems, radiating dread into our living rooms.

By using recognizable materials and references, #hellbent gives current fears a shared visual language, one that feels playful at first glance, then increasingly difficult to sit with.

What should feel tame, banal, and ordinary becomes jarring, claustrophobic, and uncanny, until the sheen on the surface reads as hollow, brittle, and decaying.

At its core, #hellbent considers consumption and consumer culture in America from both positions at once: spectator and participant. Excess appears alongside restraint and comforts via coercive control.

Each piece is intended to be viewed on its own, but collectively supports a larger narrative.