B-Sides 2018/2025 It is a part of my artistic practice to ask friends, lovers and sexual partners to photograph me. Kept in a secret personal box, I did not intend to exhibit these pictures - they were private sensual relics. In 2018 I met men on Tinder and invited them into my bedroom to photograph their bodies intertwined with mine. Some of these instant images are “B-Sides” to the tryptic arrangements I call “Entanglements & Impressions,” our contorted limbs paired with pressed flowers. In between moments of structured image-making, I gave these strangers my polaroid camera and let them “play.” A performance as both process and result, the work was an attempt to regain control of my body at the height of the #MeToo movement. I decided and directed how I was depicted, which inherently reverses the typical gender role and power dynamic between the submissive female muse and the white cis heterosexual male artist. I too have wielded my art as a source of power. The fetishization of the stereotypical 1950s American housewife is channeled through the character I play. She is the most societally superior woman because of her race and sexual orientation, and her archetype has been crystalized through calculated imagery and iconography from popular culture. She wears pastel silk negligees, lace lingerie, and tule or feathered robes. She does not work or control finances. She is severely lonely, repressed, and drinks her pain away. She is powerless in relation to her male counterpart, her husband. In these photographs, I perform a submissive and socially subordinate woman for a photoshoot where, in reality, I have all the power. Although the shutter that enabled the making of these photographs was physically pressed by a multitude of individuals, they are mine. Claiming full authorship of these images is integral to the work because I needed to experience being empowered by self-defined beauty, and on my own terms. I am uninterested in presenting for the straight male gaze. My poses are aware of historical representations of the idealized anglo female - icons crafted by the men who controlled the Hollywood Golden Age and later Playboy - yet they subvert the dominant narrative. A beauty mask referencing whiteness or Jason Voorhees, makeupless expressions of disenchantment, a wig cap rather than a blonde mane, my dark body hair - these are deliberate refusals. I am unwilling to become a tired trope. Perhaps I’ve tricked you into thinking that’s what you’re seeing. From 2023-2025, I revisited the images and colored, scratched, and blotted them with ink. I’ve smeared them with my fingertip, my imprint is unavoidable. Framing was the only area where I gave up control, and by drawing over those spaces, I take it back.