Artist Statement


Everything we experience is a sensory invasion, penetrating the human organism. Through evolution humanity has developed certain base relationships with all stimulus; we ascertain meaning from symbols, have intrinsic structures that form language for communication, and primal instincts to help survival.  These instincts have always alerted humans to avoid dangerous circumstances, but through symbolic representation and psychological structure these stimulus teach us how to relate to our modern world; fight or flight.  I am very interested in how our subconscious forms complex relationships with the stimulus of daily life; creating connections in our psyche that we may not be aware of.  Our anxieties, compulsions, fetishes, obsessions, phobias, and even our sense of humor are the psychological result of such relationships.  Many of these connections are shared on a cultural level but often these established “truths” are nothing more then reflections of a group’s mass neurosis. My art practice challenges the notions reinforced by hierarchical systems such as religion, government, and mass media; daring the viewer to shed their subconscious shackles. Subverting that which intends to exploit mass consensus to maintain societal control.

The false dichotomies of good and evil, right and wrong, win and lose, male and female, attraction and repulsion, etc. have been indoctrinated into our minds as truths; and through subversion we can transgress this illusion, even if for only a moment.  The experience can have an effect similar to a lapse of reason, spiritual awakening, an existential epiphany, derision, self abandonment, aberration, or even something as simple as a moment of laughter.

I view art fundamentally as a contrived experience; stimulus directed and engineered to achieve some affect.  Video is the medium I find most closely connected to the subconscious mind, the screen creates a visual pathway between physical reality and the inner world of the psyche.  The illusion of motion, persistence of vision, and suspension of disbelief are allowed by the psychological and perceptual complicity of the viewer’s imagination. My work often includes the contraction or expansion space, manipulation of time and motion, live camera feeds and unconventional installation, performance of symbolic actions with the body, and the use of custom software that allows for chance and viewer interaction.  I am fascinated with how technology and scientific advancement not only change the way we experience and view reality but also how we can directly effect it.  As the science fiction of the past has become the science fact of today; my work reflects the thin line between the real and the imagined. 

I aim to trigger chains of association and confront the viewers’ expectations; unlocking the repressed mind; offering a potential rebirth. Through appropriation, parody, repetition, personification, ritualism, puppetry, and metonymical symbols; I not only comment on representation but also deconstruct its functionality and forms. My concerns are also the exploration of the act of watching, as well as, ways of looking, identity construction, self indulgence and self activation. Emerging the viewer into a darkened room and invading the subconscious; stimulus that form phenomenological relationships and disassociation with reality. If the viewer can be taken into a moment of transgression where reality is in question, associations can be unlearned or relearned; and the limits of our perceptions can be removed.

-NyQ Bonaventura