Troubled Games

Cards of Freedom

106 card deck in plastic sleeve
1.75” x 2.5” x 3.5”
2022

Each card lists formations of liberty – freedom: of speech, from embarrassment, to profit, for gender, etc. The game's rules are intentionally vague, allowing for players to decide collectively how to engage the cards. Often the participatory action results in players conceptualizing hierarchies while playfully approaching critical dialogue on value.

Girl Scout Cookies

31 raku fired ceramic Girlscout cookies, table, plastic table cloth, cash box
29” x 70” x 29”2021

These ceramic cookie replicas were made using a process where I burned Samoas Girl Scout Cookies as the combustible material in a raku firing. I made this piece to consider how children are indoctrinated into the system of capitalism and how America’s youth learn its belief system. Burning the cookies was a performative element in my process and an antagonization of market exchange and labor reproduction under capitalism.

Ms. Monopoly

Pulverized pole dancing shoes, resin, glitter, acrylic paint, Monopoly board game components, photographs, dice
20” x 20”
2019

This replica of a Ms. Monopoly board game is made from previously worn pole dancing shoes. The owners of these shoes dance as a way to take back ownership of their bodies. Pole dancing for participants is a way to build community, heal through empowerment, a fitness routine, and much more. The shoe owners initials and professions are listed below:

C.C. – Chemistry Teacher and Baker
P. N. – Flight Attendant
A.L. – Software Engineer
J.Y. – University Recruiter
N.Q. – Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
I.L. – Software Engineer
N.B. – Small Business Owner

The work examines bodily autonomy and feminism under capitalism. Many of the jobs held by these women could be stereotyped as ‘she-boss’ or ‘lean-in’ positions.

Ms. Monopoly is a spin-off board game from the original that is marketed to empowered women. "You know you've made it when they try to sell it back to you."

There’s No Striking It

Slide deck poem
38 slides, each slide: 5.5 x 8 inches
2020

I made this during the COVID-19 lockdown when virtual work became dominant in culture, class consciousness rose, and the hypocrisy of the American dream was commonly expressed. The slides contain documentation of clay bowling pins disintegrating or being sliced, a paper-mache bowling ball on an unbalanced seesaw, and a poem.