Crescendo

My mother had a miscarriage before I was conceived. I learned this at age 12. My siblings and I coped with the knowledge of this loss by naming this unborn child “Heaven Sibling.” I became fixated on the mythology and physicality of birth scenes after learning about Heaven Sibling. Crescendo was created from my explorations into the complex details of these scenes, from the amniotic sac and the placenta to a mother's kiss on the newborn's head. The painting speaks to both the specificity and universality of this connection between mother and child. It's also a reminder of the presence of modern medicine in an intimate scene.

Buns’ Out!

Buns’ Out! is a future vision of my sibling on the beach, made during a time of increased tensions between their expression of identity and our family’s generational fears about gender and sexuality. In the painting, they are topless and finally at ease with their physical appearance. They exude a calm that radiates outward, with the essence of Water-Moon manifestation of Boddhisatva Guanyin. It’s both a love letter to them and a wish for their psychological and physical health.

Ivory creates work as a labor of healing. Their practice spans drawing, oil painting, printmaking, and sculpture in an effort to untangle generational ruptures and imagine alternative spaces of safety. Their practice began with close observation and portraiture as a child, living in a rentstabilized apartment with seven family members who were each navigating transnational adjustments. In high school, they began to create colorful figurative paintings, followed by iron and textile sculptures in undergraduate studies. These works serve as havens for touch, memory, and queerness, such as representing the tactile sensation of pressure from a chest binder. They are especially interested in bodily autonomy and freedom for their queer siblings and community. They use Buddhist iconography as a touchpoint for healing and a thread of intergenerational familiarity. Currently, they are a first-year medical student at Mt. Sinai, creating biomythographies in oil paint and working in lithography at the Robert Blackburn printmaking studio. They are fascinated by the way oil-based processes hold touch and luster, much like the oil of human skin, and enjoy the sensitivity and sensuousness inherent in these media.