Felling Censored

The relationship between artistic freedom and societal boundaries has always fascinated me—particularly the psychological weight that censorship places on creative expression. I wanted to explore what it feels like when an artist's voice is suppressed, whether through outright prohibition, institutional pressure, or the more insidious force of self-censorship driven by fear of controversy or backlash.

Censorship manifests in countless forms, each carrying its own burden. Sometimes it's overt—work being banned, exhibitions shut down, voices silenced. Other times it's subtle—the quiet pressure to soften a message, dilute a concept, or abandon an idea entirely before it even takes form. For artists, this suppression can be profoundly demoralizing, creating feelings of anger, injustice, and betrayal, especially when they believe their work carries important meaning and deserves to be heard.

Yet I recognize the complexity of this issue. Censorship isn't always rooted in malice or control—sometimes restrictions serve to protect vulnerable individuals from hate speech, incitement to violence, or content that could cause genuine harm. The tension between protecting free expression and safeguarding human dignity creates an ethical gray area that societies continually negotiate.

My technical approach involved using a projector to cast words directly onto my body, transforming skin into a canvas for language. I carefully selected words that embody the emotional experience of being censored—terms reflecting frustration, silencing, invalidation, and erasure. By projecting these words onto the human form, I created a literal visualization of how censorship inscribes itself onto the artist, becoming part of their identity and emotional landscape.

The resulting images merge body and text, making visible the invisible weight that restricted expression places on creative individuals. This ongoing project, developed during my studies at Arizona State University, continues to evolve as I explore different vocabularies of suppression and experiment with how light, shadow, and typography can communicate the complex emotions surrounding artistic freedom and control.