Virgin Tears, 2022
Forgive Me Father, 2022
"CATHOLICCORE"
My motivation for making art comes from a desire to reflect on myself and my past experiences. I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I wanted the opportunity to use my years of knowledge in my present life by analyzing and reflecting, without pressure to represent Catholicism in any particular way. Catholiccore represents a collision of my past and my present life. The goal is to analyze how current pop culture takes inspiration from Catholicism in areas such as fashion, entertainment, and social media.
Can the aesthetic be separated from the religion, and if so, then to what extent? The foundation of my series is portraiture — which varies from studio to environmental — of iconography that has been repurposed as trends. The Church has many different aspects of its culture. The addition of photographing architecture and still life is a quieter visual representation to show a greater range to the aesthetic of Catholicism than simply people.
The inspiration for this series came from the amalgamation of images seen while searching the term “Catholicore” on social media platforms such as Pinterest and Tumblr. The connection between the images is fragile, yet strong enough to communicate the narrative of Catholicism. Whether this is a positive or negative collection is up to the viewer.