Max Trumpower

Artist Statement

Driven by narrative, my work explores the politics of folk parables and its relationship to queerness. In my work I am intrigued by the fluid boundaries between Mexican folklore, Southern traditions, and their complex relationship to craft that are representative of my childhood.
Through this body of work, figures shape-shift beyond the boundaries of gender, plant, and animal into an existence of their own. The figures within my work provide context to another world possible- where trans liberation and ancestral knowledge collide. These ceramic objects together create a transcendental place between narrative and color that distinctly present the world-building capabilities these objects possess. Variation of glaze and surface design impart the capacity for transition between the past, present, and future. Ceramics imparts the perfect medium to represent this transformation between transience to permanence, metaphysical to ground. These figures are not only a monument to our ancestral past, but to our collective future.