When: April, 2025
Where: Outlier’s Gallery,
157A First Street, #246, Jersey City, NJ
My solo exhibition, Stilled Resistance, at Outliers Gallery in Jersey City, NJ is on display through the month of April, 2025. The show features a series of still life paintings that, at first glance, might seem playful or nostalgic — familiar items like Twinkies, Lay’s Potato Chips, and Kentucky Fried Chicken rendered in vibrant detail. But beneath their glossy wrappers and bright branding, these foods served as symbolic stand-ins for the everyday person, caught in the currents of larger societal forces.
Each painting in Stilled Resistance was a meditation on the social and economic issues shaping our times. The Twinkies piece, for example, addressed The Great Replacement Theory, repurposing the iconic snack cake as a satirical but unsettling metaphor for how conspiracy rhetoric can dehumanize and distract. The bag of potato chips in Price Gouged takes on the issue of corporate price gouging, referencing how even the most mundane products reflect growing inequality and corporate overreach. Another painting featuring Kentucky Fried Chicken explored the intersections of class, cultural identity, and mass consumption.
The show invited viewers to confront these tensions through the lens of still life — a traditionally quiet genre reimagined here as a subtle but pointed form of resistance. By elevating junk food to the realm of oil painting, I aimed to draw attention to the overlooked, the discarded, and the deeply personal ways we all navigate a world shaped by profit, power, and disinformation.