Painting & Writing
Born in 1990, I fall in the middle of the millennials. As the children of the ME generation, we were called the "Me, Me, Me generation" (Times Staff, 2013), but even though we “promise that you'll never find another like ME” (Swift, 2019), we are also “the problem. It’s ME” (Swift, 2023). We have the guts to celebrate ourselves and the dignity to respond to an ego attack. We call ourselves ceos (small caps) while running after awakening, breaking that chain of identification, and shaking off the separation to be in the One. We treasure the craft of caring for and loving ourselves until we become so invincibly independent. We bust the guilty trick of embracing pleasure, on a quest to break generational trauma, and on the way to setting ourselves free. We then blur the "I" by removing its capitalization and retreat to where things are decentralized. We document ourselves, publish ourselves, incorporate ourselves, and WE celebrate ourselves.
This body of work, My Pronoun is I, is a celebration of our time and generation—a generation striving to seek and embody the most authentic forms of self-expression. With the ability to choose one’s own pronoun, perhaps that pronoun might simply be ‘I’. Growing up, many of us were influenced by a compendium of literature that encouraged an inner journey to discover the true self, from Siddhartha to The Knight in Rusty Armor. We led a generational trend of summoning the courage to uncover our truths, form independent opinions, and free ourselves from the cages of societal expectations. This generational phenomenon has profoundly shaped the era we live in.
In response, this body of work poses a question: What does self truly mean to us? Perhaps, at the core of individualism, the treasure we find is not only our own unique identity but also a greater sense of togetherness and a larger calling for what ‘We Are’.
