The word “wrong,” and one would guess the concept of “wrong way” with it, came into existence around 1300 as the negative of “right,” evolving to encompass not only the opposite of “right” but any diversions from it. Use of the word “wrong” has risen over the years, propelled polarization and the rise of advice-shaming as a favored genre of content across generations. “Wrong” is an unusually abstract word for the English language. Unlike most English words that are meant to represent something with relative degrees of accuracy—i.e. I say “tree” and you see a tree, “wrong” describes not reality as it is, but an abstract agreement. Wrong is a word that exists to describe and enforce a set of rules.

This show is an invitation into the realm of the wrong—a counter universe of sorts to this clusterfuck world that man built the right way. Going the wrong way represents a form of courage. It’s an act of treason to all those out there making sure we get it right and a dismissal of the seductive cult of generic as well as the social rites reinforcing the surrender of identity in order to truly belong.

The objects and paintings you see before you are ones that absolutely refuse to obey. They grew outside and were made primarily with discarded, disowned, and damaged materials. Literal garbage. Broken chairs. Mail. Energy drink cans. Prescription bottles. Found pool floaties. Things I forgot to return.

This practice of trash-mache of mine is historically rooted in two distinct times—the 1930s when the U.S. started to introduce municipal trash collection and the recent pandemic when I, like the rest of the terrified world, took up hobbies as a means to ease our collective anxiety. Easily bored by instructions and coveting other people’s seemingly and rather shockingly care-free lives on social media, I just sorta started experimenting with paper mache mixing it with a variety of materials and Home Depot “Opps paint.”

Taking a year to make a table in the “Wrong Way” became a way for me to engage the everyday while disrupting the hyper-active hysteria of productivity that I’m prone to. For each object, the fabrication process was one of trial and error as is evident in the utter handmadness of everything—as is my total amatuer level of skill. I still get embarrassed by how wrong everything is that I make. It pushes up against the perfectionist streak I’m currently struggling to smother down into the deep cavities of my subconscious. It makes me worry that I’m wasting my time. After all, doing something the wrong way isn’t exactly a winning choice. The thing is, the wrong way is both an act of treason against the norm and inherently native space for those of us who make up the “minority.” Men who see their power as arising from “logic”---as in the logical progression of events, time, and right action–will always deem denouements of their power as mere illogical noise.

Men hate my voice. They think I speak wrong. They tell me so. In anonymous comments on videos I post. In emails after seeing me speak on a stage. In production notes on a podcast I’m recording. In quiet cafes as well as loud bars. Use your “inside voice,” my husband whispers at dinner. No need to be so loud he says with the calm demeanor of someone who has never needed to shout in order to be heard.

These objects are not the result of a process to overcome material. They are active participants in constructing themselves and a world that I want to live in. One where abandonment is transformed into possibility and objects/the objectified refuse to obey.