Devolution

Acrylic on canvas with pencil, acrylic marker, and crayon.

24x36x1.50"

Devolution explores what anthropologist Kathleen Stewart calls "ordinary affects," those collective feelings that move through us when we gasp, sigh, or react together in moments of horror or delight. The title is about how we regress in those moments, shedding our individuality to become something more primitive and reactive. We de-evolve. It's part of my 2021 series investigating these everyday emotional currents that bind us together, even as they unmake us as individuals. I made this with acrylic paint, pencil, acrylic marker, and crayon, asking: what do we feel together? And what do we lose of ourselves when we surrender to that collective emotion?