Anna Park

In any situation, people tend to shift into a particular version, or facet, of themselves. Whether it be a conscious decision to address and to assimilate new situations and surroundings, or that these changing environments influence us mostly subconsciously, our means of adaptation are entirely our own.

Moving nearly halfway around the world as a child, and across the country as a young adult, required constant adjustments to life and to people and cultures as I found them. What I did not realize immediately was that not only were the places I inhabited changing dramatically, but my own outlook and perceptions of life and of art were equally transformative.

I thus have a profound desire to create art that reflects each of these worlds and the many versions of myself that have occupied them. The figures that are the focus of my work have been rendered in a variety of forms over the course of my movable life, While they exist in a certain spaces, I choose to obscure the faces, to portray them as melting into and out of the background. I try to represent how my self identity has at times been at risk of being lost to the many abrupt transitions I’ve experienced, for good and for ill.

Charcoal as my medium of choice allows me a deep level of intimacy with my work. For example, the way it stains my fingers and casts a veil over my arms as I am working. It is, for me, an immersive experience, one I hope to share with the viewer through snapshots in black and white that convey the transient nature of all human experience.