All of my work begins with tension. With an uneasy feeling in my stomach, I once asked my parents “What does it mean to be an American?” My parents’ answer was simple: “We live here, we raise our kids here, we are American,” they said, as if baffled that I even had to ask. Originally working as a studio artist addressing issues such as class, identity, and race, my curatorial goal is to work alongside artists to create a space where their stories can be told and heard the way that they intend. Storytelling is at the heart of my practice, and previous group shows I have collaborated in—OK CORPSE, Nowhere Fast, and Multifaceted—acted as diverse quilts, sewn together by the stories and breadth of work of the featured artists. As a curator, my aim is to foreground the stories that the artwork has to tell.