BIOGRAPHY:
Adrian Romeo grew up in Clearwater, B.C., a small town with much to offer, but very little in the way of an art community. Her interest in art began with using crayons to colour on the back of her bedroom door and hording the little plastic stands from the center of the pizza boxes.
Her interest in art was always present, but the confidence to pursue it took the isolation of early pandemic life to emerge. In 2020 she began studying fine arts at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops B.C.
Adrian’s work is a creative response to the vast complexities of being human. Her practice is informed by the universal experience of living in a human body, and how it manages to be individual and unique while also being ubiquitous. It is shaped by her ever changing mental, physical, and emotional relationship with her own body. These relationships have become more complicated with the development of chronic illness in the past few years. After being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, Adrian became influenced by scientific research and her artworks, reached new personal depths, that explore the line between discomfort and allure.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This installation is an expression of my journey navigating diagnosis and living with a chronic illness. It is a space created with the complex emotions involved in mind. Since I’ve developed Fibromyalgia my heightened awareness of my body and the space it takes up has changed the way I experience the world. Each moment is unpredictable and accompanied by pain and fatigue. I no longer have the ability to ignore my body as a physical object and let it disappear from my mind. I am conscious of it always, especially with regard to the way it occupies physical space.
The space I have created attempts to illustrate my journey by encouraging the audience to experience the elements of the human body as objects separate from themselves. Through fleshifying familiar objects I invite the viewer to experience the body as something removed from its association with personhood. I am addressing the distance I feel from my physical body and the consumption it has on my thoughts. I hope to demonstrate how my relationship with my body has changed; how it has gone from being a part of my whole self to being an object separate from self which I interact and struggle with. It is an object which I use as a vessel but with an alarming loss of governability resulting in a separation of self which can no longer allows me to just simply be.
The space I have created is soft and inviting, but also uncomfortable and grotesque. It is a place of growth and learning, even as it is one of estrangement. I myself am in the process of learning and exploring these themes I hope you will indulge your curiosity and embrace discomfort in this safe space designed for asking questions, and seeking answers. You may sit, you may read, you may feel, you may giggle. I only ask for gentle hands and open minds.
