Artist Statement:

My current work updates the Victorian tradition of Lover's Eyes—achingly intimate but anonymous depictions of a beloved's face to be worn as brooches or hat ornaments—into pin-pricked relief sculptures that serve both as reliquaries and worry dolls, nodding to the post-digital condition of longing. I am invested in what it means to miss somebody in 2020, which procedures count as devotional, what reinterpretation looks like in the endless stream of visual flotsam we consume on a daily basis, and how all of those concerns square with the legacy of colonialism embedded in Romantic luxury items. These pieces reflect the de-territorialized experience of embodiment in all its messy, frustrating, and tyrannical iterations, side-stepping a press-release-approved relationship to love in favor of far murkier fare. I'm interested in tracking the relationship between love and mourning while creating new ways to excavate personal and political identity.

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www.toreyakers.com