The Pink Room
Artist Statement
This body of work is a collection of self-portraits, even when the figure is not human. Each image represents a version of myself, a memory, or a psychological residue that I have carried over time. Some of these figures appear as pigs or distorted bodies, not as literal animals, but as embodiments of experiences that felt dirty, humiliating, or difficult to confront. They are fragments of personal history that I chose to contain within a single constructed environment.
The idea of the pink room comes from the historical use of pink-painted prison cells, often referred to as Baker–Miller Pink, a color introduced in correctional facilities in the late twentieth century in the belief that it could calm aggressive inmates and reduce hostility. The intention behind these spaces was not comfort, but control. The color was used as a psychological tool, a way to regulate behavior and produce compliance. This paradox between softness and authority became the conceptual foundation of the work.
In my paintings and drawings, the color pink does not behave as a calming presence. Many of the tones are intense, saturated, and visually aggressive, producing an atmosphere that feels unstable rather than soothing. The space appears gentle at first glance, yet it carries a sense of pressure and confinement. This contradiction is central to the work. The color promises comfort, but the environment produces tension. What was intended historically as a mechanism for calming bodies becomes, in this context, a visual language of unease.
The self-portraits included in the series exist in two parallel modes. The pink room images are constructed from imagination, shaped by memory and internal reflection. The oil self-portraits, created earlier, were made from direct observation and close study of my own face and body. I chose to bring these two bodies of work together because their combination reveals both the surface and the interior of my experience at that time. The observational paintings present the physical exterior, while the imagined figures within the pink room expose the psychological interior. Although the oil self-portraits predate the pink room works, placing them within the same collection allows them to function as complementary records of the same period of life.
