There is a vital link between everything I do IRL and what I make that is present because I am still alive. Much of my work exists because of traumatic events in my past, and now lives as documentation of performances that I have done in response. Using the lens to try to document my reality and justify my situation, I want to be a voice for women and people who have experienced. I am interested in representation and color, victimhood and power, and the process. Using trauma as a catalyst, I tend to create a sense of vulnerability out of violence and need for power and dominance. Because I was sexualized at such a young age and not fully aware of what happened to me until recently I look at my body of work as coping mechanisms and a means of survival. Much of what I present could be failures in a way, failure of the medium, or me, to measure up. Bleaching a sweatshirt to try to make it clean, scrubbing photographs and my skin, and blotting away pink lipstick are kinds of gestures I needed to do to feel better, be heard, become whole. By photographing myself wearing all of my jewelry I do something that looks uncomfortable and is in no way practical, but now I have an image forever with every shiny thing that I love. Because a single photograph can lie, performance is a medium that helps to pull out the real and leaves behind the proof. For me, this is where the image exists and what people will remember ... the fact that I tried to bleach or scrub or blot or wear and endure.