In Service of Light

Displayed at Art Lab Fort Collins, 2025 as part of the Colorado State University photography show, this installation piece combines nude self portraits printed on japanese paper with poetry, suspended from the ceiling, the panels are both connected and fractured, intimately connected with the natural world and yet separate from it. This installation is a meditation on resilience, self-discovery, and the reclamation of inner light. The choice to be nude is an act of vulnerability and defiance, a return to the raw, unfiltered essence of being before the world told me who I should be. The golden light that floods the compositions represents the spark, the truth that never fully extinguishes, no matter how deeply buried under societal expectation, heartbreak, or fear. The translucency of the Japanese paper echoes the fragility of memory and transformation, allowing light to filter through, shifting as the viewer moves. This impermanence speaks to the fluid nature of identity and healing, to the way we reconstruct ourselves from the fragments of what was broken. At the end, viewers were encouraged to write down what lights them up, makes them happy, inspires them, etc.  The pieces of paper could be left behind, or kept. The pieces left behind become a living, on going part of this installation.