Artist Statement ꩜

“In my work, I explore the colligation of comfort and discomfort found in nostalgia, language, home, memory, and the “human” tender nature: a ceaseless search for connection, for a tranquility in the self-made narratives of our past. I am most fascinated by the coexistence of the bright, the nurturing, the soft, and the ache of mourning and longing, especially elicited by cultural and personal memory as a first-generation Syrian American. How does personhood stretch when provided by the memories of others as well as my own? Formally, I engage with these ideas through laborious and repetitive processes as devotional acts, as well as soft and transparent materials that evoke the organic, ghostly, and the haziness of memory. Bright colors and whimsical mark-making offer the eyes of a child, ones that we are taught to forget and quickly grow out of, yet which see all nonetheless.”