Lavender and Stone
My Thesis exhibition of site-specific artworks, Lavender and Stone, is a visual and material investigation into the silenced voices of women, filtered through the personal and collective experiences of grief, memory, and craft. Grounded in feminist theory and situated within physical and emotional landscapes, this thesis explores the intersection of ephemeral, feminized gestures and the permanence of archival forms.
The site-specific installation invites viewers into an immersive space of reverence, quiet resistance, and remembrance, where personal memory and material metaphor converge to carve space for feminist mourning and archival presence. The work was presented at Maison Relais Courtyard in Lacoste, France from August 8 – August 15, 2025, with a private soft opening on August 13 and reception for the public on August 15.
Hard and Soft. 2025.
Acrylic Paint, PLA Filament, Thread, Rope, Rocks 18x24in. Thesis Exhibition
Relais Courtyard, Lacoste, France.
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In Hard and Soft, the relationship to place extends beyond aesthetics, it’s a conceptual homage. My installations convey the architecture of southern France, towns shaped by the labor of its inhabitants, many of them women whose names have been forgotten. Embedding my mixed media works into these crevices is a gesture of reverence and reintegration. I want the work to feel discovered, not displayed; intimate, not monumental. The space allows viewers to stumble upon something private, sacred, and enduring, like the stories of women that history often buries beneath grander, more masculine narratives.
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In the courtyard installation, Hard and Soft, I assembled fragmented sculptural forms of excavated wood, painted canvas, and 3-D printing against the weathered stone wall. Because the wall bears centuries of permanence and labor, the fragile, body-like structures appeared transient in comparison, causing the work to highlight the tension between endurance and ephemerality. The deliberate incompleteness of the pieces, leaning precariously rather than standing autonomously, produced the effect of instability, as though collapse were inevitable. This instability was not accidental but caused by a methodological choice to prioritize gestures of care, provisionality, and interruption over monumental permanence.
Chaos on the Mattress Installation, 2025. 60x84x24in. Thesis Exhibition Relais Courtyard, Lacoste, France.
Chaos on the Mattress, Is a response to the loss of my sister, whose brilliant, complicated, and tragically cut short life became the earliest map of my understanding of beauty, limitation, and the silence that surrounds both. As an introduction, her lifelong battle with mental illness is reflected in a child’s space, a timeline of her life. When my mother, a high school senior, discovered she was pregnant, the doctor announced, “You only have to hang your pants on the bedpost to get you pregnant.” This piece lives on bedding transforming grief into form, silence into texture. The highly saturated pink, mimicking the bodily fluids spread across her room, the remnants of text scattered throughout and written on the lampshade, shedding light on the scene as it unfolds. The imprint left from the tufted lines of the mattress embedded into the collaged canvas on an intaglio press is reminiscent of the impression left on my mind. Collaged layers of canvas maps, writing fragments, and distressed pigments recreate both the physical evidence left behind and the emotional terrain I inherited. The mixed-media surface of the painting’s photographed transfer archives the memory. The tactile volume encompassed in the mattress's three-dimensional form, builds the story of a life now lost.
The Picnic: Installation View, 2025.
Mixed Media.
96x96x48in.
Thesis Exhibition
Relais Courtyard, Lacoste, France.
The Picnic: Installation View, uses craft to tell the story of nurturing, domesticity, and familial strength. Home place settings, a tea-stained linen towel, and a centerpiece of stone and figure express the convergence of servitude and support. The interactive experience, offering lavender scones and lavender tea within a curated table setting reinforces the perceived “place” of the woman as one of subservience instead of foundation, mediating between reality and conceptual.
At this table, four voices speak across time and language. Each plate a quiet offering of feminine responsibility. Read clockwise, their words flow like lavender and stone: softness held in strength; memory carried with grace. Together, they form a circle; unbroken, enduring, and shared.
