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SAINT GEORGE & THE DRAGON

Since 2023 I have embarked on a porous aesthetic project that aims to translate the classical myth of St. George and the Dragon into the medium of film. The project absorbs socio-political, cultural, and spiritual narratives of the American South and places them in tense juxtapositions as a way of enacting a cathartic healing process.The conceptual departure point is palingenesis, the rebirth of an entity through turmoil. The project not only unfolds cinematically, but produces bodies of painting, photography, performance and sculpture, as each chapter of the overall narrative is performed live, among the public, utilizing artistic artifacts, costumes, and photos. I see my own identity as an artist as problematic, and use it as a conceptual tool. Each chapter of the project sees me both embodying and interacting with a myriad of

iconographic characters relating to my own southern identity, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Elvis Presley, Tom Sawyer, and the Southern Gentleman. The project itself is a grand mixture of history, autobiography, and mythology—an intensely private universe in which symbols and images are violently upturned and disidentified. The resulting cosmology is intensely absurd and complex, and is rife with allusions to Christian mythology, popular southern music, novels, and folklore, as well as interrogating political themes of the contemporary alt-right, historic conservatism, and the role of the artist in western society. Crossing from sculpture to performance to video, I am investigating my own place in the western tradition, and my own role and responsibility in social justice.

TWO GREAT COWARDS & A FULL TEN ROUNDS

THE KING & THE GREAT WHITEWASHER

YOUNG HUCK & THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET