You Will Be With Me in Paradise

Exhibition: March 29th - April 2nd

Reception: April 1st, 5pm - 8pm

I use my work to explore my personal experience of being born and raised in a fundamentalist religious cult, and the aftermath of leaving the cult. I was taught that Armageddon could come at any moment, and only the true worshippers of Jehovah would survive and receive everlasting life on a Paradise Earth. My purpose in life was predetermined and designed around being a Jehovah’s Witness. There was room for very little else. It was a life of isolation, guilt, and fear.

My practice is interdisciplinary, using drawing, painting, and animation together to unfold a narrative of indoctrination and liberation. My work helps me confront the fact that I am an apostate, it helps me take back my power and my voice, and I want to use my voice to speak out against a system of oppression hiding in plain sight. I make this work for myself, for others who also share these experiences, and to create a public awareness around these issues. I use this work to celebrate how I have forcefully taken the things that I had been denied since birth: an education, a career, a voice, a free life where two plus two always equals four.