Artist Statement

Conveying my experience as a AFAB trans-masculine person, the relationship to my body - my sometimes menstruating body - in relation to and outside of my trans experience, understanding my orientation to death, the process of decomposition and regeneration through transitions, understanding my spiritual body and my childhood and familial relationships are the themes of my work.

Painting, found object/assemblage sculpture and writing are the vehicles I use to induce vitality and the potential for a deep connection with myself and the external world. Influenced by daydreams of bodies within bodies and worlds within worlds, I see magic in the ability to work with energies that are simultaneously understood and enigmatic. The potential of our bodies to articulate information beyond language gives me fertile ground to connection and creation and when combined and shared infinite space is given to succulent, generative energy that has the potential to revolutionize the mind and societies.

Curiosity about the things we don’t talk about influences my work as well - the emotional complexities and impact of interpersonal relationships, what it means to struggle in a transactional and consumptive culture and the inherent beauty that exists despite reductive value systems. 

Within my practices I seek to find reprieve from the subtractive nature of performance and our world’s preoccupation with status, consumption and violence. I want my work to challenge me and to antagonize unconscious living. I am looking for a connection to something deeper, a universal truth to feel confronted or comforted by and I hope the viewer sees something recognizable in my work. 

-James Emmett