Storage & Vessel

self portraits as storage vessels

They Call Me Radical - porcelain slip casted personal belongings and found objects

This body of work explores the act of storing—what we hold onto, what we hide away, and the complicated reasons why. I’m drawn to the ways we assign meaning to objects and spaces; how a drawer or a trunk can become a place for both care and avoidance. Are we preserving something precious, or tucking it out of sight? Is it baggage or a memory we’re not ready to let go of?

Like my other series, the ceramic components in this work act as a metaphor for me and my body. By creating vessels, I’m thinking about myself as both the vessel and the object being stored—able to hold memories, experiences, and even the weight of my own history.
I’m building ceramic drawers and pairing them with found objects, personal belongings, and ready-made storage pieces. Some drawers are filled with ceramic replicas of items from my life; others hold the actual objects—things connected to my experience as a transgender and gender non-conforming person navigating my body and identity. Items like sex toys, binders, duct tape, make-up, tools of survival, moments of euphoria, and markers of both harm and care.

This work sits in that tension between what’s visible and what’s hidden. I want viewers to feel like they’re prying into something deeply personal—snooping through drawers they weren’t meant to open. Even though I’m the one inviting them in, there’s still that discomfort, that voyeuristic feeling. Because that’s what this is—a look into the ways I’ve held, hidden, and carried parts of myself, both past and present.