BIOGRAPHY

Through painting, collage, various fiber practices, and the art of drag performance and embodiment Mats utilizes color and the layering of materials and subjects to create vibrant, vehemently queer work. With a contemporary take on historical craft techniques like embroidery, crochet, and rhinestoning, they honor those of marginalized genders who cultivated these practices and whose complex histories have long been neglected. Their compositions lure viewers into a candy-like exterior within which a closer look can reveal more serious undertones and complex issues.

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Using cheeky double entredre, they explore the modern queer experience in relation to social media, body image, sex, love, and self-worth. Through the queering of familiar icons and by paying homage to their queer ancestors, they express gratitude for the rejection of cisheteronormativity and the embrace of boundlessness. Their depictions of the human form break the confines of the linear body and push to critique the absurdity of the accepted binary gender structure and beauty ideals while exploring the possibilities of the noncorporeal, trans, body. Their work explores the vastness of life in many forms, from single-cell organisms to semi-humans, to wholly imagined forms, as an invitation for viewers to examine what unites living beings and dismantle anthropocentric hierarchies.