Jo Lacangan

Artist Statement

I have been described as a passionate, spontaneous, bold, outgoing, intuitive, and empathetic person. In my art practice, this can translate in many ways. To be passionate means that I only work on projects that I’m passionate about, that have meaning, narrative, or make a statement. I am spontaneous, meaning I like to live in the moment and have my work be relevant to the world’s events today. I am bold, meaning I’m not afraid to say what’s on my mind. My outgoingness has led me to seizing many opportunities and making connections, and I hope to start making collaborations. Being intuitive means that if something about my work doesn’t feel right, I don’t do it. And in regards to empathy, the stories I tell with my art I want to be from the heart.

Within the many mediums I use, I think about what medium could best explain the moods of my concept accurately. To tell a moving narrative, I often opt for time-based media like videos. To tell snapshots of a scene that are to be weaved together by the imagination of the viewer, I would use photography. To get the emotional feeling and intensities across rather than be didactic about what it is, I would use drawing or painting. To make it have a sense of entropy and temporality, I would use performance. To be relational to the viewer, I would use sculpture. To guide myself and the viewer into my imagery, I write text. Every medium has an effect that I would need to utilize in order to tell my story.

The intent I have for my work is to move people to emotion which eventually will lead to action. I do not intend to tell a person how to think, but to consider another person’s shoes, another future, another perspective, another world. I am making the starting blocks in my practice to do this by making deeply personal works about my own experiences, and now delving into documenting the personal lives of my loved ones. I attempt to create an emotional experience through color and composition, as well as line and rhythm, and linguistics whether that be through complementary text or titling itself.