Voidpunk Utopias

Water is a shared necessity that transcends even boundaries between species. The Water Festival is fascinated with water as a symbol of commonality, valuing the coexistence of our different ways of understanding and celebrating things that are vital to us. As the first piece of the Voidpunk Utopias series, it also introduces my interest in imaginary objects influenced by my sensory sensibilities. My personal utopias reflect the way I understand things through the act of stimming, which allows my body and mind to interpret input in creative ways. In this piece, all objects represent different reflections of water as a concept, from observations of states of matter, to poetically-informed interpretations, to communal experiences of drinking. The variety of artifacts encourage viewers to think about the unique ways that they relate to the subject by searching for objects that resonate with them, similar to how the series as a whole encourages them to project themselves onto the figures as avatars for exploring identity.

Urban Reunion encourages viewers to evaluate their relationship with their surroundings. In the drawing, contemporary objects pervading our daily lives are interspersed with similar imaginary objects with less apparent purposes. This piece is a response to the worlds of science fiction, where aesthetics determine our interest in imaginary things even if those things more or less represent uninteresting things in the real world. For instance, a flying car in The Jetsons is still just a car in that world, and, inversely, one of our common objects could be seen as a marvel of imagination, design and technology through the eyes of an outsider. As well, the piece interrogates the ways in which we segregate objects. The drawing displays objects that are often not seen together, especially those kept separate as distinctions of age and privacy, because unconventional relationships to those things reflect a queer and neurodivergent experience and wisdom that encourages us to rethink the possibilities of what we have access to. In other words, this is a utopia that can be built by reconfiguring and revaluing familiar environments.

Masks offer individuals and societies alike the agency to transform their identity. In my work, masks represent the idea that we are who we choose to be, have the power to affect our legacy, and in this way, our evolution is social and cultural as well as biological. Generations interrogates these changes and the kinds of concepts we ascribe to them like “power” or “primitivity”, depending on how viewers attempt to decipher the relationships between the figures in the drawing. They may ask themselves, “who is the leader?” or “who is the youngest and the oldest?” because those are characteristics that help to determine social roles and hierarchy in their daily lives. They may take notice of how costume characteristics inform these perceptions as well, depending on what cultures they are reminded of. Through obscuring these relationships, the viewer is free to imagine connection outside of familiar frameworks.

Chewable Circus is a celebration of stim toys. As stim toys are normally relegated to children’s entertainment, this piece asks what kinds of stim toys could exist in a world that prioritized sensory seeking in a neurodivergent fashion. The “chewable” in Chewable Circus reflects the work’s depiction of stim toys which are meant to be savored, both in a literal sense, as the objects are primarily mouth-focused, and in a visual sense, as the composition is designed to be a feast for the eyes. The drawing was inspired by my autistic, literal interpretation of the saying “chewing the scenery” and the imagery it conjured in my mind, making it a representation of how neurodivergent “misinterpretations” can be reframed as creative thinking and the ability to see things in new ways that neurotypical peers may have overlooked.

Identity Jungle is inspired by queer (and especially neuroqueer) theory. It has an interest in how we understand our bodies in relation to the world and it imagines the cultural artifacts of a society that values our ability to transform our identities. While the latter idea is often associated specifically with transgender identities, it is also generally applicable to queer people in that many queer people go through processes of finding a name for and choosing how to embrace different aspects of their identity. While the “coming out” is often depicted in media as a singular, linear life event, the reality for many queer people is they come out many times in different circumstances and discover and create new words to describe their experiences over time. This is reflected in the various transforming dolls and totems to holistic views on time and aging depicted in this drawing. This piece also suggests that conceptualizing identity can be influenced by a person’s ontological understanding of the world. In this way, the visual line between objects and figures in Identity Jungle is blurred to encourage a nuanced understanding of “self versus other” in a similar fashion to Generations.