Rosana Ybarra

My work seeks to reflect the layered coding at work in the American culture wars and play with how these codes imbed and become different in the subconscious. As a queer radical feminist, my own anxieties around indoctrination and social identity are symbolic fodder for my work. I integrate mixed media artworks into installations that function as an ontological moment. My interest is in intersections. For instance, the construction of white womanhood in relationship to institutionalized power. And how fragility, complacency and escapism form a bond.

I approach these topics in artmaking as I experience them, through a fog that sometimes clears. The practice is divergent, performative, conflated, and material. Taking philosophical cues from Arte Povera, deconstructionism and the legacy of assemblage, I rely heavily on creating connective tissue between material and emotional associations. Embroidery echoes women’s work, chiffon hints at superficiality, blinds stand as gatekeepers to the psyche. Approaching each piece with a complete lack of assumption on how it should be, I look for the transformational moment in which the artwork hits a sense an internal harmony and symbolic gravitas.