What project were you investigating or developing during your residency?
During my residency, I worked on a conceptual photography project titled Gratia Plena – Full of Grace. The project draws from Catholic liturgy, where “gratia plena” signifies a state of divine fullness and spiritual grace. I was interested in translating this theological phrase into a visual and emotional language and relating it to beauty rituals. Through this body of work, the residency provided the time and critical space to deepen the conceptual grounding of the project. Gratia Plena became an exploration of sacred femininity, interiority, and the quiet power of belief. The project continues my broader practice of observing beauty and emotional landscapes, while expanding it into a more spiritually reflective and symbolic direction.
How did your time at this residency shift, expand, or challenge your practice?
My time at the residency shifted and expanded my practice by allowing me to engage closely with artists working across different mediums. Being in conversation with painters, sculptors, installations, curators and interdisciplinary practitioners challenged me to reconsider the boundaries of my own medium. Seeing how others approached material, space, and concept gave me the avenue to think more critically about my process and the intentionality behind my choices. Also there was the exchange of ideas that helped me experiment more freely and take creative risks I may not have considered before even till now. It also strengthened my understanding of collaboration and dialogue as part of artistic growth. Observing how other artists translated personal and social themes into their work encouraged me to deepen the conceptual layers within my own practice. Overall, the residency created a space where I could reflect and refine my work with renewed clarity and confidence.
What kind of support during the residency was most meaningful to you?
The most meaningful support during the residency was the intellectual and communal environment it fostered. Having consistent access to dialogue with other artists and especially the curators and educators was incredibly valuable. The critiques, informal conversations, and shared reflections allowed me to articulate my ideas more clearly and refine the conceptual direction of Gratia Plena and my role as an artist in general. Equally important was the gift of time and space. The residency created a focused environment free from everyday distractions, which allowed me to immerse myself fully in research and experimentation. Overall, the combination of critical feedback, creative freedom, and communal exchange was the most meaningful support, and it significantly shaped the development of my work during the residency.
Were there any local materials, histories, or conversations that found their way into your work?
During the Divergence residency, I’d say more spiritual conversations found their way into my conceptual photography project, Gratia Plena. The title, drawn from Catholic liturgy meaning “full of grace,” became both a spiritual and emotional anchor for the work. Being present in a space where Catholicism was not just a belief system but a lived culture allowed me to observe how faith shapes gestures, rituals, aesthetics, and ideas of beauty. I became particularly attentive to the visual language of Catholicism such as light, fabric, posture, silence, reverence and how these elements carry emotion. These observations informed my compositions, use of color, and the emotional tone of the images. Rather than documenting religion directly, I explored how devotion, vulnerability, and longing manifest through the body and atmosphere.
Conversations around beauty were also important. I reflected on how Catholic iconography often frames beauty as sacred, pure, and transcendent, and I questioned how these ideals intersect with contemporary understandings of identity and emotion. Through Gratia Plena, I examined the tension between sanctity and humanity, beauty and the unknown, how grace can exist within imperfection and day to day life. Also as how emotions and beauty itself can be devotional. The Divergence residency environment gave me the space to approach Catholicism not only as religion or tradition, but as material something that could be translated visually, abstracted, and reimagined within my conceptual photographic language.
What is currently inspiring your thinking or practice (a book, film, conversation, research, place, etc.) — and why?
Right now, I am drawn to anything that treats emotion as sacred material. That perspective continues to shape how I compose, light, and conceptualize my work. My exploration of blue in environment and emotion also resonates deeply with Bluets by Maggie Nelson. In Bluets, Nelson approaches blue not merely as a color, but as a site of longing and devotion. Blue becomes emotional architecture, something that holds grief, desire, obsession, and transcendence all at once.
Similarly, in my practice, blue is not just a visual choice but a conceptual and psychological space. I use blue to shape the atmosphere and to suggest interior states such as melancholy, contemplation, stillness, spiritual yearning. Like Nelson, I am interested in how a single color can carry contradiction: calm and depth, distance and intimacy, sacredness and vulnerability.