My Work

My work concerns itself with the collective unconscious. As a feminist artist living and working at 7,000 feet near the sacred San Francisco Peaks in Northern Arizona, icons are very much a part of my daily life.       The revered sciences of antiquity were recorded in secular and religious symbols that sum up certain esoteric  principles and therefore form layers of fabrications and enigmatic language. Most cryptograms condense a multitude of meanings into one entity and can be interpreted in a cosmic or human sense. Obscure dreams or nightmares of past, present, and beyond often have no key and can be arduous to unravel. More recently, I've explored the aristocracy, multi-ethnic, bi-racial, Afropunk identities of London & Paris and racial dynamics in intersectional culture -- in a subconscious effort to bring about reparative justice and collective healing. I'm interested in making contemporary art that challenges the narrative -- and truth-telling, without fear of reprisal.  I want to discover how art can be used to envision new forms of race and representation freed from the bounds of historic racial constraints.  Many of my hybrid works are drawn from existing imagery or archival research in response to art history/ herstory.  I've encouraged myself to think about my re-imagined portraiture's potential to engage with the social and political landscape of our time -- and have been resolutely dedicated to gender equity and feminist discourse in an attempt to challenge perception and possibly inspire social change.  With the epidemic of gun violence and police brutality on the streets of America, my transformative re-imagined works are often manifestations of my survival as an artist and a peaceful citizen, as our nation has increasingly been in mourning & protest over loss of human life and the devastation of war.  The feminist art movement has argued that re-appropriation, re-signification, or reclamation is a cross-cultural process by which marginalized individuals can reclaim artifacts or images that were previously used in a disparaging manner -- and uplift them in a way that brings about socio-economic empowerment for under-appreciated, under-represented, and under-valued womyn, wimmin, and womxn in the visual arts.  I enjoy working in nurturing environments that encourage creative expression and embody feminine energy that supports womyn.  We are all the heroines of our own collective memory.  -- RHONDA URDANG  4/15/2024