Artist Statement

Like any other area of endeavor my work has changed as circumstances around me has changed and as I have felt compelled to respond to those changes. The experience of constant migration has forced me to reshape my art practice. That experience of life in three different regions of the world has brought home to me how much certain things affect our lives: borders and movement across them create natives and aliens; acculturation-how we navigate old and new identities-full of frustration and refreshing surprise; the confrontation of old codes of color, caste, race, and gender in new forms-our capacity to dehumanize other human beings on the basis of such thin things as our epidermis continues to astonish and sadden me. That’s what my work in its diverse forms has been very much about, but more so now as we confront so much genocide and abuse. My work is about our inhumanity but also about our power to resist and affirm our humanity.