Excavating Consumer Mythology

What we leave behind

“There is no food we can eat, clothing we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webs of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there?”

– Alexis Shotwell, Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times

Artist Statement

My research-creation explores the entangled histories of consumer culture, colonial legacies, and material waste through the lens of speculative fiction. In response to escalating socio-ecological crises, I am developing an ethical framework for sustainable, zero-waste, and biodegradable methods of art-making. Working primarily with repurposed materials (e.g.: cardboard, plastics, packaging) I construct a fictional future in which today’s artifacts are preserved and studied by descendants interpreting the material legacy of North America. 

Drawing on scholars such as Heather M. Davis (Plastic Matter) and Max Liboiron (Pollution is Colonialism), I frame waste and petrochemical remnants as integral to North American and Canadian cultural heritage. My current focus is on sculptural assemblages and installations incorporating cardboard-built structures, castings, and mass-produced classical statuary replicas. 

Inspired by neoclassical forms –long associated with Western power structures– I reimagine architectural fragments as artifacts embodying extractive economies and environmental degradation. By approaching architecture as an abstraction of the human and social body, my work examines how power relations persist through spatial and material hierarchies in contemporary [post]colonial capitalist systems. 

Proposing organic, ephemeral structures designed to decay, I aim to reframe the narratives embedded in our built environment. This conceptual lens deepens the environmental critique at the heart of my practice by connecting architectural symbolism to cycles of extraction, accumulation, and collapse. Through this, my work interrogates the ethics of infinite material and waste production, and proposes alternative ways of relating to material, labor, and the environment.

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Leftover

Reconstructed from the remnant trim of Haunting Ground (11 × 13 ft),
this cardboard installation rises from the northwest corner of the Libby Leshgold Gallery.

Presented as part of The Show 2026.

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MFA Project : Excavating Consumer Mythology – What we leave behind

My MFA thesis examines how neoclassical architecture, colonial ideology, and consumer culture shape contemporary North American ideas of progress, permanence, and value. Through sculptural installations made from repurposed domestic waste (such as cardboard and plastic packaging) and found materials, the work engages with the symbolic and material residues of extractive economies.

By reconstructing classical architectural fragments with fragile, non-archival materials, these installations challenge the perceived timelessness of neoclassical forms and expose their entanglement with colonial and industrial systems. Rooted in a low-impact approach to making, the project considers questions of legacy, resource use, accountability, and cultural endurance within a petro-state context.

Working within a speculative framework, the installations imagine how future humans might encounter, assemble, and interpret the remnants of our present.

Thesis Exhibition – April 2026