Living in diverse environments has helped me to be more creative and broadened my worldview. I would say that I’m an amalgamation of these contrasting cultures. These experiences are very different and are reflected in what I create and have become part of what my art is today.

Marylin Monroe, Elisabeth Taylor and Cleopatra are women I often paint. They represent some of the most iconic celebrities that any generation can immediately recognize. This intensity of personality is something that I try to recreate through my work.

According to what I feel to express, the creative approach is different. With Hulk Marylin, I wanted to create a particularly strong piece standing out among other works. Like on social media, the landscape is crowded. While this presents benefits, like the ability to get [your work] in front of the masses, it also presents a somewhat larger obstacle: [making] your presence pop in a sea of people. In this context, I tried to recreate the climate on social media by making some ‘traditional pieces’ in order to make other pieces stand out.

I have been fixated on these Hollywood-famous figures for some time. I find the process by which a celebrity becomes stratospherically famous extremely interesting. It appears to be a mixture of hard work and meticulous social maintenance. They are like vintage influencers! In this age of quick communication, the word celebrity has been redefined. It’s no longer reserved for actors, singers, etc. Celebrity on the most basic level simply means ‘being known’ among a group of people and having a certain opinion that others look up to. Social media has allowed a common person to become the superstar they’ve always looked up to.

I wanted to make some strong pieces depicting the digital age we are living in. People tend towards presenting a socially desirable, positive self-view to others when online. In turn, this gives individuals an increase in self-esteem but a decrease in self-control. Individuals can choose the information that they post, and keeping up a certain online identity can mask their true personas.
For the narcissist, this feeds into their need to be admired, and the more reception a post receives, the more is fed into this type of behaviour. For the anxious, online interactions can translate into real-life interaction, and can feed that anxious feeling of questioning whether people like them or not, which corresponds with what kind of reception online posts receive.

The work I create is an open dialogue with the viewer; I’m just relating the environment we live in. In that way, I don’t feel I’m mythicising the subject matter.

I feel that using blocks of colour starkly emphasize the disembodied quality of the figures, and an inherent tension between a constantly disintegrated physicality and a desperation to maintain a veil of performance and glamour.

Images on social media are becoming more and more filtered, digitally manipulated, flawless. I try to depict this trend, so with this in mind, my work has to look as if it was digitally manipulated – but there is only traditional oil in it.

Ironically, I’m using traditional oil in a traditional way to make my work look like as if it were digitally manipulated. With my portraits, I depict the overuse of effects and filters in the most honest and simple traditional way.

With the effect of multiple, layered, translucent images, I try to emphasize the ephemeral nature of what ‘celebrity’ can be. The flicker of a camera shutter or the rapid, oversaturated, succession of images on a social media feed can be read through the illusion of multiple, layered, translucent images. The effect is a kaleidoscopic portrait that doesn’t hide its inability to memorialize itself but is still hypnotic in effect, demonstrating society’s obsession with the two-dimensional image over any three-dimensional reality.

I was lucky because I finished my solo show just before the lockdown hit. The pandemic has closed museums, galleries, art spaces and cancelled exhibitions, plunging many cultural institutions into uncertainty and immediate financial loss, while also threatening a long-term effect on the arts.
On the other hand, social media has been a great way for individuals and communities to stay connected even while physically separated. Before the Covid-19 crisis, the digital age had already impacted art by making it very accessible to many people all over the world. There are no more geographical boundaries preventing people from consuming art.