“Impending Beauty” transports viewers into a tea room that recalls early 19th Century European opulence, yet every surface bears images of an all-engulfing rainforest. Within each gilded detail and ornate pattern lurk the iconography of human violence and environmental exploitation. However, these symbols of aggression are in turn overwhelmed and neutralized, subsumed by nature.

The installation interrogates man’s instruments of aggression as well as those luxurious, ‘civilized’ artifacts and furnishings that hold so much material value but exist purely as a result of the heedless ransacking of natural resources. Within this room nature prevails, the flora and fauna recolonizing their sacred spaces.

Anaconda celestial, 2017
Vintage Settee (1940’s), upholstered with a cotton fabric hand-painted gold acrylic paint, 39 h x 71 w x 27 d inches.

Insects Tea Set, 2017
Hand-decorated porcelain with decals and gold paint.

My Father’s Lizard, 2017
Branch, paper, gold paint, Dutch gold. 18 h x 5 w x 7 d inches.

Ensnared Parrot, 2017
Metal birdcage, paper, gold paint, Dutch gold, found branches. 10 d x 15 h inches.

Ensnared Toucan, 2017
Metal birdcage, paper, gold paint, Dutch gold, found branches, 12 d x 18 h inches.

Eagle’s Pray, 2017
Vintage Armchairs (1940’s), upholstered with a cotton fabric and gold paint, 38 h x 24 w x 26 d inches.

Butterfly, Ferns, and Fungi, 2017
Vintage Mirror, branch, paper, gold paint, Dutch gold. 5 w x 5 h x 3 d inches.