Statement

My work deals with issues of self and identity. More specifically it investigates and questions the dualistic nature and authenticity of self as an individual or self as part of a collective whole. I am also interested in my role as an artist and visual rhetor and how that is transcribed to the viewer. My work is engaged in developing a dialogue with the viewer in effort to evoke a shared (myself and viewer) or collective memory and /or response.

Working within the spatial context, my art questions the idea of authenticity and identity formation as it relates to Orientalism, Western hegemony and the Other. My work also investigates particular dualistic tendencies that are dominate and submissive within my self. My ethnicity spans two cultures and I am concurrently Asian (Korean) and Caucasian (North American). This dichotomy has proven itself to be both blessing and curse, each dependent upon the specificity of any given situation. Though these are the most obvious of the dualities that are existent, matters become complicated when such things as feminine/masculine, artist/wife, teacher/student, adult/child etc. are factored in. When one or the other dominate roles surface, which is the true or authentic self? Do these roles surface due to nature or due to conditioning?

I am interested in creating art that transcends the objectness of materials and becomes experience. On a base level, all of my work is narcissistic in that its genesis stems from lived and perceived personal experiences. However, I am considering my audience and what it is they receive as viewer of my art. As an artist, my purpose is to communicate. The most effective way I can communicate is by sharing work that is imbued with the residue of my experience. This allows me to exchange the transferal of ownership from individual (original experience or feeling) to collective (communal experience or feeling) and the viewer is able to (re)experience it as their own.
 

– Donna Stack