Artist's Statement, New York 2007

As young woman with a mixed ethnic background, I have always felt displaced in my family and lost in the society. Because of my background, I always needed to express feelings in art. In this body of work I use myself as an object to relate myself to my family that still live all over Europe. I feel that it is important to explore the different personalities and ethnicities of my family. Since I chose to do self-portraits of my family members I felt it was also very important to differentiate them with different outfits. Clothing is very important in our society today, and that’s how we normally stereotype people. I consciously choose the clothing for each family member to represent them as believable as possible. Since clothing is so important,I chose to use material that belongs to each family member. I also wanted to show how unimportant the complexion is when it comes to a different ethnicity. For me it was also important to show how clothes can change a person.