Tavarus Blackmonster

Artist Statment

My practice is involved with trauma and healing. As an artist use interdisciplinary terms. discuss the difficult nature of being a disabled, Black, artist through a cultural lens. More specifically, how my internal struggle is portrayed in my work and how for me, that creates healing. am a survivor of physical trauma, having underwent open-heart-surgery as a child. The post tr auma has caused challenges in my life but art and making have provided a way to heal, a way to address my Black identity and a way to place my personal history within the histor y of art.

I use motif to discuss issues of domesticity race and joy. For example, my role as a Father who was sexualized as a young adult. I use gestures to engage the contradiction of being both objectified and a caretaker with a visual language, a written verse and plastic pixels of virtual space . I employ abstraction and surreal images. twist lyric into feeling and churn catharsis from the wrought emotion. The combination of distasteful visual expression and embodiment of the work is paradoxically beautiful because my use of color, original forms and my passion for the studio practice. am informed by my experience as a Black man and inspired by my life as a successful and professional, schizophrenic.

The major contr adiction in my life is that my personal struggles inform my work but do not overlap with my professional relationships. Further, that due to my disability making art presents the only labor not concerned with my psychology. receive retirement benefits because of my childhood trauma. But I have never worked harder than as an artist. In this way, my experience has evolved parallel with duality. Where through my art, I express my personal histor y - a unique history of a Black experience - yet I also share difficult truths about myself through the removal of a visual language, a written language, an embodiment of the lived exper ience that is both solitary in its trauma but universal in its quest for healing.

My work is involved with trauma and healing. My work is involved. My work. Work.

Tavarus Blackmon, MA, MFA https://tavarusblackmonart.com https://art-music-lit.space

Vice President, Axis Gallery https://axisgaller y.org

Webmaster, Axis Editions https://axiseditions.com

2020–2021 Artist Fellow, Kala Art Institute

Cur atorial Fellow, Root Division

Lecturer, CSU, Sacramento/Folsom Lake College

Lead Broker to the Art Consultants of UC Davis Health