My practice explores themes of femininity, identity and nostalgia through a series of personal portraits based on childhood photographs. Set within the bedroom, the works capture different stages of youth development during the early 2000s and 2010s. I investigate how identity is shaped through both environment and cultural climate, while considering the bedroom as a constant site of memory, intimacy and self-construction. This allows the work to operate between personal memory and collective cultural experience, encouraging viewers to reflect on both childhood and the ways identity is unconsciously shaped through social conditioning.
Central to my practice is investigation into the performance of femininity and the increasing pressure placed upon young girls to construct an identity that aligns with socially accepted ideals. In particular, the rise of hyper-femininity discourse and the media-driven archetypes of the late 2000s/early 2010s, such as the “cool girl” or “pick-me girl,” which often positioned overt femininity as superficial or undesirable. By revisiting childhood imagery through an adult perspective, my work reflects on the subtle ways gender conformity and beauty standards become internalised. As women of colour growing up within predominantly white and westernised beauty ideals, the work also explores feelings of difference, invisibility and the pressure to overcompensate in order to feel accepted. Although the portraits initially appear documentary or surface-level, they hold a bittersweet tension between childhood innocence and the informed understanding of the cultural climate experienced retrospectively.
To communicate these themes, I work primarily through oil portraiture due to softness that reinforces the emotional sensitivity of memory and nostalgia. I finish the paintings with acrylic washes that create a resist effect across the surface, producing a faded, archival appearance. I use this process to physically embody the instability of memory and the gradual erosion of childhood recollection over time. The gradual lightening of skin tones within these washes is intentional, referencing the internalisation of Eurocentric beauty standards and the pressure to overcompensate in order to feel accepted. Additionally, the playful elements of my work evolve alongside the age of each subject, transitioning from childhood stickers that mirror the innocence of childhood (while functioning as symbols of identity formation, personality and cultural influence) into digitally influenced overlays such as filters and social-media-inspired motifs. I use this progression to reflect the shift towards increasingly curated and performative constructions of identity shaped through technology and online culture. As the subjects mature, these additions become more orchestrated and artificial to suggest how adolescence is increasingly mediated through self-surveillance, beauty culture and digital validation.
The process begins with the base, using gesso not only as a primer but also to build texture into the paper itself. Drawing from childhood memories, whether recalled personally or sourced from digital and physical photographs, I create an initial layer in oil paint. Using rich, fatty layers and expressive, painterly brushstrokes, I establish a surface that will later react dynamically with acrylic paint.
These washes allow me to physically work into the surface through scratching, peeling, scumbling, and other forms of distressing. I often work chronologically, with older memories appearing increasingly decayed and fragmented. The washes themselves vary in both colour and style, ranging from thin white veils to surfaces inspired by 21st-century Instagram filters.
Once the paintings have been worked into and built upon, I incorporate carefully selected accessories and objects. These elements simplify and symbolise a range of themes, but collectively they reflect the cultural influences of a specific moment in time, encouraging viewers to consider the lasting effects of contemporary culture and memory.
