“Wholly Integrated” is a painting and sound exhibition that explores gestation, birth, and the Buddhist concepts of death and rebirth through photorealistic figuration and surreal, symbolic imagery. The title is inspired by an interview with my mother about her experience of giving birth (sound clip available in the gallery).

Conception, gestation, and birth–literally and metaphorically–represent moments when the boundaries between the individual and their surroundings dissolve. The individual identity is fractured to let something new in, which can grow and change and develop into something entirely different. We are the most embodied version of ourselves in these moments of generative merging; whether creating new life or simply looking up from our screens and into the eyes of another human being.

As IRL interaction becomes less necessary for human flourishing, being together in person becomes more of a brave, sometimes even luxurious, risk. I emphasize embodied presence and human connection as vital for personal and societal well-being and represent the body as a potential site for revolution.

Rejecting the male-dominated history of the classical nude and the passive subject, the subjects in my paintings are agents of their own self-actualization.