Stephen was born in Royal Oak, Michigan on 2 January 1987. He received his B.F.A. cum laude in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in December 2008.
His interests include and not exclusively feminism, marxism and post-colonialism as non-identitarian ideologies. He thinks aesthetic fascism is ridiculous. His artist statement reads:
If critical art practices produce images in order for them to locate a counter-imagination to that produced by capitalism, then such a practice imagines the possibility of labor. Such a possibility I aim to make visible via images in which labor locates within the economy of the dissemination of images and not in any one image.
What images do we disseminate and which images should we disseminate? If time causes one image to disappear for another to appear, then the disappearance of images becomes as important as their appearance. Between images, dissemination opens the possibility for making visible labor by its disappearance. Thus, how images become present becomes critical in determining what and who becomes visible or invisible. This question becomes a question of economy and it is within the economy of dissemination that I intend to locate the image of labor.
I intend to project labor’s image as an economy in which the value of images becomes determined by their proximity to the present. Any valuation of an image must be placed in a historical event where the representation thereof becomes subject to dissemination. What and who appears present is always-already under dissemination and locates the imagination within the present time.
I hope to make visible the struggle between the autonomy of constructed images and their dependence on a given structure. My work focuses on the difference between images arising from chance and those from production. If my work appears formless it is because I do not aim to project a reasonable image. Instead, I attempt to project the differences between images in order to better understand their construction and the way in which dissemination alters their meaning. Differences between images happen by way of dissemination and reveals intelligence to have no definitive end in any one image.
Any image locates intelligence. I decided to become an artist in part due to this premise. Indeed because during my early years a speech pathologist diagnosed that I have “cluttering,” which causes difficulty in developing a coherent syntax, I sought other means of representing myself than speech. Art offered a way of doing this without compromising perceptions of my intelligence.
My intention will involve critically altering notions of aesthetics from those that are ambivalent to the dissemination of images to ones that make visible this process. For my arrival to this stage I have to thank many who supported me along the way. In particular, I had the good fortune of coming in contact with John E. Penny while at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art), from whom I learned to constantly challenge my perceptions and the perceptions of others.
Stephen has exhibited in Baltimore, Maryland. Selected exhibitions include: “Stuttering: in a New Light” (2008) and several juried ones hosted by MICA.
In February 2009, Stephen curated “Propositions,” an exhibition at Area 405, an artist-run not-for-profit gallery and studio space in Baltimore. “Propositions” proposed ways of imagining spaces of transition in order to depose identification with an essential predicate.
