Artist Statement

I’m a self-taught artist and zinester who works across a variety of mediums and is passionate about activism and accessibility. Outside of/in addition to my work as an artist, I work in a library, and I see a lot of overlap between that work and my art in that they both feed my interests in preserving, collecting, and presenting information and materials. I’m interested in the value of art in education and helping frame community conversations. In particular, I’ve been exploring the role of semi- and totally-abstract art in this kind of work; typically I think people gravitate towards more realistic/representational art for that purpose, but I think there’s value in using abstract and ambiguous work for education and communication as well, since it can help us think/talk/learn about things that aren’t adequately represented in our current reality.

Though my work isn’t naturalist in the traditional sense, I’m heavily influenced by nature and natural science--lines like those on topographic maps run throughout my work, and I’m also inspired by the imagery of circuitry, cells, and skeletons. I try to bridge the natural and the human-made, and hopefully make both feel a bit unfamiliar. When I’m working, I imagine myself taking the smallest, shortest moments in time and stretching them out onto my page past the point of visibility until they become slightly distorted--but beautiful in a different way. I think that disability has influenced my (positive) thinking about (typically negative) things like abnormality and deformity.

WEBSITE

https://samirknego.wixsite.com/here