Break Roulette, 2023
Oil paint on unstretched canvas, 46 x 40 inches

Gentle Liar, 2023
Oil paint on unstretched canvas, 42 x 60 inches

Walking West, 2023
Oil paint on unstretched canvas, 45 x 45 inches

Couldn’t Do It Alone, 2023
Lasercut plywood & dice, 12 x 24 inches

How to Play Checkers, 2022
Oil paint on unstretched canvas, 48 x 72 inches

“As functioning as a ‘society of mind,’ the self is populated by a multiplicity of ‘self-positions’ that have the possibility to entertain dialogical relationships with each other.”

Playing the Game is a series of works living in the same colorful, uncanny world. The series imagines the self not as a singular identity, but rather a process, a dialogue, and a game. All painted on unstretched canvas, they are tapestries telling narratives of the depicted pink figures—almost symmetrical but not quite, dependent on the other’s next move to keep the game going. Upon closer inspection, the grassy landscape is astroturf and there are small acts of violence driving the players forward. The world is haunted by a strange beast resting on a wooden armature.

If you win a game against the other self, it simultaneously wins the game against you. In this way, both strategy and luck are pointless. The viewer is invited to play on a laser cut checkerboard where the rules are self-determined. Each player starts off with one piece with the intention to travel to the opposite side of the board; but while the opponent is not watching, players are encouraged to steal pieces, add more dice, and move things around. The series uses the dialogical self theory to reframe identity as a two-player conversation where motives are deceptive and kinship is up to a roll of the dice.

This series was completed for my Fine Arts senior thesis project, and was exhibited in our 2023 end-of-year show, Paper Fort.