The idea of luxury can very well represent everything that is wrong with humanity (exclusive, wasteful, dogmatic, and impractical), so why do I desire it so much? Even though luxury comes at a heavy cost to both the consumer and the environment, we are addicted to its seductive beauty and promise of power. I wanted to show my reconciliation with the desire for something wasteful by capturing it in the waste it both produces and sets itself apart from. Products sold under the guise of luxury use the sensory experience of texture as the main medium of exclusivity. My goal is to use texture as a medium to show the contrast between luxury and practicality, showing that their visual differences hide their real similarities.

 Using designer handbags as ‘trash bags’ questions the boundaries of a trash bag, asking whether a purse made of leather and gold can really be seen the same as the thin plastic bag we fill up each week even when it is used as one. Capturing jewelry made of gold and diamonds behind bricks and pipes captures the contrast between stones of luxury and stones of practicality, asking which one is truly more valuable. Are the diamonds we decorate our bodies with worth more than the stone we use to build our homes and workplaces?