About.
Artist Statement.
My practice is a mixed approach to articulation. My work a layered contact of intention and subject, understanding the photo as a symbolic means of communication. I am interested in time and its connection to place, ritual, and matrilineal descent. My family and our history are important to me. I often concentrate on generational connection and am inspired by my ties to those who came before me. Typically working in 35mm black and white film, I create works that focus on the juxtapositions of post-colonial personhood and belonging in connection to place; specifically, in relation to my own
matrilineal decent.
Exploring class politics and social conformity in production and outcome. Informed from both historical and contemporary critical thought. Like Bell Hooks, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Anna Gaskel,
Luis González Palma, David Lynch, Judith Vicenti, Maya Deren, and Lola Alvarez Bravo who came before me I hope to produce new and innovative complex interpretation through image production, cultural criticism, and making. I create art to process emotion and experience and look forward to continuing on a path to support my own creative growth and inspire positive institutional change.
Bio. 2024.
Ashley is a mother, a daughter, a granddaughter, a partner and a friend. She was born and
raised in Santa Cruz California, spending much of her childhood on the shores of
California's beautiful coast. She is an alumnus of California State University Monterey Bay, from which she holds a BA in Visual and Public Art.
Ashley also holds an MFA in Photography from San José State University. In her time at SJSU she continued to work conceptually, critically exploring her own ties to the land known as New Mexico. She completed her MFA with a critical theory driven body of work
entitled "The Mission Project," in which she explores her Northern New Mexican Heritage. Ashley is a direct descendent of the Abáachi Mizaa (Spanish Colonized Jicarilla Apache) and her matrilineal ancestral decent was centric to this project. A body of work in
conversation with American enculturation, Northern New Mexican Indignity, the Southwest Indigenous diaspora, and her family’s story in particular.
Ashley’s practice is, as always, in conversation with post-colonial personhood, and connection to place, through the
photographic creation. Ashley is a contemporary artist and critical theorist with an interest in colonial born social normality production, and this in connection to contemporary
constructions of race, class & gender in the United States.
