ART HONORS THESIS EXHIBITION

Reception: Monday, May 5 from 6-8 pm

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I look at my work as a means to communicate obsessions with appearance, insecurities about the body, and the need to be desired.

Drawing inspiration from images in high fashion photography, I explore relationships between beauty, materialism, sexuality, and violence.  Painting myself in the position of the model, I take on the role of both victim and willing participant in the narrative.  Using my own body as subject/object, intimacy replaces anonymity.  By heightening the disturbing nature of the image, I question the extent to which we participate in violence against ourselves in an effort to be objects of desire.  Anxious, obsessive line and luscious materiality of paint become vehicles to simultaneously seduce and repel the viewer.  The paintings speak to fixations and compulsions, oscillating between the futility of conforming to cultural standards of beauty, and the insatiable craving to emulate the stunning, violated model.

SARAH MIKENIS, 2008