An Altogether Different Kind of Mask: Materiality, Function and Sophistication in the Work of Claude “Rocky” LaRock (2022)
This essay, written for Monte Clark Gallery, introduces viewers to the remarkable work of Stö:ló master carver, Claude “Rocky” LaRock, who gives form to the narratives and themes expressed by the spiritual and supernatural figures central to his culture and community in a way that renders them anew. Using chainsaws and power tools, and adorning his masks with a level of material complexity virtually unprecedented in Northwest Coast art, LaRock departs from the ceremonial form to create an altogether different kind of mask intended not to transform the identity of a wearer but to transform the condition of the viewer.
An Argument in Favour of the Dialogic Image (2021)
Here, I make a case for a structure of looking that acknowledges the intertextual capacity of photographs and does away with our fixation on the atomized and the isolated. In this structure there arises an opportunity to see in absence an inherent latent presence that can be brought forth through the linking up of photographs to form contextually enriched narratives.
Alone at the Centre of All Creation: An Overview of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (2021)
An informal paper that I wrote over a period of three months for personal enjoyment, Alone at the Centre of All Creation is a general overview and argument in favour of taking seriously David Foster Wallace’s divisive novel, Infinite Jest - hated fervently by some and lauded as a masterpiece by others.
Visual Sovereignty: Charlotte Richards and Taloi Havini (2019)
An essay that I wrote in my second year at Emily Carr, Visual Sovereignty inquires into the power dynamics of photographic representation contextualized by settler-indigenous relations. Looking at the images of Edward S Curtis, Charlotte Richards and Taloi Havini, I explore the double-edged sword of photographic representation: a mechanism of violent oppression on the one hand, and a tool of resistance on the other.