Coalescing is a series of collages made in response to the incessant onslaught of mass media and pressures of mainstream beauty standards found within. Women’s fashion magazines in particular stand at a crossroads of cult, consumerism and the unattainable image. By re-appropriating and deconstructing those glossy pages something truer, hand-made and authentic can be expressed. The resulting juxtapositions seek to remind one of the visual and psychological manipulations abound in advertising while also creating a new dialogue in response. Coalescing manipulates the manipulated as both rebuttal to the aesthetic pressures of advertising and as reclamation of the human image to speak a deeper truth by reflecting a more personable and representative spirit of self.

By using found images, I wish to pay homage to both of the original subjects and photographers but also appropriate their likenesses in order to remix the meanings and messages; weaving my own narrative out of many others. These original images often provide a scripted institutional display of inclusion and diversity that ultimately commodifies the Other and their bodies instead of demolishing and addressing the structures that underpin them. I strive to challenge the illusions of glamor and the desires they project and provoke ways of seeing that both duplicate and redirect their associated realities. To question what is considered “normal,” both the visible and invisible boundaries built around us, and refocus our eyes to see beyond the carefully crafted constructs that make up our current experiences.