Your Ocean is on Fire
solo exhibition
may 3–june 30, 2024
artspace, raleigh, nc
“Your Ocean is on Fire” is a collection of portraits and letters addressed to “you”. “You” embodies individuals, ideas, and entities that have circled around my mind again and again. I use food, meridians, and zodiacs as silly yet meaningful symbols connected to “you”. Through this process, I reflect on objectification, ownership, and identity. As I navigate experiences I can’t catch up to, I look for solace and clarity in creating. As I exist in situations that can't provide me space, I attempted to create that space in these paintings. What I couldn’t say to “you”, I say here in these letters. In this work, I return to my discomfort with cycles of emotions, seasons, relationships, and stagnation.
This exhibition was partially funded by South Arts through the Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grant.
Photos by Danny Peña
Your Ocean is on Fire
48 x 78 inches
oil on aluminum
2024
I don’t know why I’m staring down this cliff if I’m scared of heights.
With every wave that crashes in my feet lose feeling; bracing myself if I fall. They came irregularly, then regularly like contractions.
Before you walked away I hugged you once to say “it’ll be fine”. I hugged you a second time for no reason at all.
Today I laid on the shore. The water flooded my eyes and made its way down into my chest.
I’m not sure if I’d rather continue setting myself on fire or lay in these rising and falling tides.
But I can’t stomach existing in these cycles without resolution. I’m just peripheral to your downpour.
And I can’t tell you any of this because none of us can swim.
Metal
48 x 48 inches
oil on aluminum, dried herbs
2024
Autumn is white.
The absence of color this season shed my greenness.
All of my carotenoids and anthocyanins were revealed to you and you and you.
Autumn is the large intestines and letting go.
It took me the full season to shed the idea
that cobalt and cadmium wouldn’t muddle into a putrid gray.
Autumn is about the breath.
This was never meant for me to hold.
And as I took a long exhale
that pungent ink finally oozed out of me.
Autumn is Metal.
It is the alchemy that transforms all of this muddiness
into tissue that is more distinct but remains translucent.
Ren 4
48 x 60 inches
oil on aluminum, dried herbs
2023
Autumn is white.
These seasons repeat every four weeks, and every seven years.
Swollen yet constricted and bound.
Why am I carrying this rotten gourd?
icky.
I am past the peak of this fourth season, soon you’ll find something else plump to gawk at.
All the energy, time, effort I put in, what is left for me in the end?
You are not a gift but just a nagging reminder of something I never wanted.
icky.
I just wanted to be that boi frolicking next to the flowers.
Why am I carrying this (guǒ)rd?
Watermelon
60 x 60 inches
oil on aluminum, dried herbs
2023
I hate the space you dominated;
in our fridge, at the dinner table, in my mind.
Its weight and mass is overbearing. Its sweetness is shallow.
You see yourself in it, and I know you take pride in that.
I see you in myself, the stiff rind of it all.
Summer brings heat and fire.
You were meant to be a remedy. But I only feel flames.
With age, you’ve tempered and withered.
Your rind now leathery and tough; your insides mealy.
I choose to fill the rest of my summers with mangos, supple and giving.