Painting
Missing Persons

With this portrait series of missing persons I am cultivating a relationship to these individuals conditioned upon their status as missing—I would never know them otherwise and cannot know them in any other way. I have placed advertisements on international Craigslist groups in their corresponding languages. These advertisements are an open call for people to send images and written accounts of their ‘missing’, all of which then manifest as a painted portrait. I am invested in giving these strangers a face, a visibility, and remembrance. I also have to account for ways in which people who respond to my advertisement might get invested, and the relationships I am constructing with them. This creates an impact on the project that is engaging, draining and haunting.