about
Artist Statement
My practice bridges traditional drawing and painting with expanded approaches in printmaking, installation, and performance. Exploring themes of memory, identity, and connection through creating immersive experiences invites viewers to engage with the complexities of the human condition and perception. Familial ties, matriarchal teachings, and the feeling of growing up appear throughout my work. I aim to answer the question: how do we know who we are? Forming connections between what we know to be real and what we think is not, I explore the realm of limbo using dreamy and juxtaposing materials to dive deep into the in-between state of reality and dreaming. In an absurd way, I want to give dreams the credibility they deserve, creating breaks in space that allow opportunities to view reality in an altered perspective. Wire, fabric, collage and more appear as inner self-dialogue, where ideas of what it means to re-live that which may, or may not, ever exist can be explored. Memories are fluid and ever changing, and it feels at times that my practice reflects this—grieving the loss of nostalgia, honoring memories of my grandparents and where I grew up which exist as amorphous ideas all this time later. My practice is a way for me to heal and to mourn, whether it is a fleeting dream or reality from long ago. Gestures of vulnerability are offered outwardly to release my internal self into the world—or possibly hide it in plain sight.
Hailey Urbano (b. 1997, San Antonio, TX) is a Detroit based visual artist working with interdisciplinary ideas, mediums, and tools. She has shown at Cranbrook Art Museum and Academy of Art, Forum Gallery, R Space, AudioTree Music Festival, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio Art League and Museum, and BLK WHT GRY Gallery.
Remembering to Forget: The Role Dreaming Plays in Perception
I have come to be so interested in dreaming through my own experiences and I have been doing research recently on what it means to dream and to be in another world all together. When we think of dreams, we think of vast spaces of infinite inner knowledge and storytelling that our brain produces whenever we fall into REM sleep. They are worlds of endless possibilities, a place only you know, and a containment of our worst thoughts and nightmares. It is shown that most everybody dreams yet only a few people seldom remember it (Dennet, 1976). And while we are unaware when we are deep in sleep, there are those who are able to realize that they are, indeed, dreaming.
Memory is a funny thing–- we remember only what our brain tells us is important and we throw the rest of it out to not take up or waste space in our brain. When we dream, the images we think we see come from the knowledge that lies within ourselves and our bodies, our subliminal regions of the unconscious. Material and installation choices allow me to re-enact a sense of dwelling in a space that is both dream and reality, as well as the dualities between comfort and no comfort. Artists like Salvador Dali and other Surrealists aimed to find what it meant to reproduce what dreams looked like and felt like. A real yet uncanny space, created by us, informed us, and (hopefully) only inhabited by us. We feel this “uncanny effect” when separation between reality and imagination is removed. A merging of these two spaces, that both signifies all aspects of what we think we know, and signifying a separation from home, from the familiar (Mechling, 2021). Janine Antoni went to great lengths to record her REM sleep patterns in her installation/ performance piece Slumber, and from 1994- 2000 Antoni transformed “the fleeting act of dreaming into a sculptural process” (Antoni). I think there is room to say that when dreaming, we are conscious as well, maybe just in a different way. If we are able to dream, and relive experiences or create new ones, is that not reality, or at least an aspect connected to it? In my research, I question the existence of dreaming as an evolutionary trait (in mammals at least). Links between the altering of human (mammalian) consciousness and survival suggest that the need for a “trans-marginal” state of consciousness exists in order to cope with our perception of experience. There are forms of art that aim to recreate this possible survival technique as in the genre of magical realism, surrealism, and installation. Furthermore, like in magical realism, when you can alter your reality through storytelling, it becomes an entry point for relatability and for genuine connection to the subject matter. Stories do not have to be truthful for them to have truth (like dreams). I presented this topic during my time attending Cranbrook Academy of Art as my Master’s Thesis, and created a body of work that parallels my findings with physical renditions like sculptural pieces, installation and interactive work, bookmaking, and printmaking.
Methodology & Future Research
The significance of this research is to assess perception tied to the human condition in conscious and unconscious states through visual, audio, and literature-based artwork. We are collectors of memories and when that takes place in our dreams, similar to the effects of magical realism, our dreams are spaces of an inner reality that we do not question, until one finds lucidity and even then, a dreamer would have to choose to say or judge whether a dream is happening to them (and if a dream is happening to them, and they are judging it, doesn’t that mean they are awake?). Because to judge something and make reasonings and decisions is to also be conscious and to be awake (Shaffer. 1984). The striation between dream and reality is such that one cannot be trusted, while the other must be objective truth. As there are those who perceive reality differently than others (my red is different than your red), as well as those who often find their dreams to be telling of real-life situations, circumstances, or even prophetic in nature, the interest in attempting to understand this imbalance of credibility has become the basis for my research.
These areas of interest have continued to grow into a spiderweb of continual thought and rumination, and research has funneled me into attempts to pursue these topics on a much deeper scale. Recreating memories so that others can experience them, recreating a feeling, and recreating dream architecture in performance-like settings appear to be the next steps of doing what I can to make sense of the madness we describe as our minds. Using personal photographic evidence, journal entries, and memories from both me and others, my next research project is one that emphasizes the personal as scientific, or rather the personal as significant. Extrapolating off of previous investigations, honing into anecdotal evidence and investigating primary sources will be the beginnings of upcoming methodology to reach this goal. I am just lucid enough to believe that other people also relate to what I feel. It is an urge to connect to others. My innate desire to be understood on a deeper level by others so that they have a chance to live inside of my perceptions, to give others this ability to truly experience how someone else may view the world and have that resonate, is an example of the nature of the human condition. To be seen is to be heard, and to be loved is to be changed. Moreover, this line on questioning is one of healing. Future endeavors within my practice fall into areas of love and connection to one another.
Conclusion
The desire to feel seen in a world constantly connected yet ever growing in individualism has impacts that we still have yet to fully foresee. The job of an artist, while ever growing, has remained consistent from the inception—to provide insight on current and historical events, engagement and promotion of critical thought, and connection amongst people in one way or the other. Using research and creation as a means to heal oneself and a community at large can result in change, resolving generational lacerations of the heart. The significance of the research I have done, and intend to do, while philosophical and “meta” in its existence, comes from a longing for humanity, and a processing of experiences that stay stored in the body. Healing as a methodology for making and making as a structure for change.
References
Antoni, Janine. n.d. “Slumber.” Janine Antoni. Accessed January 18, 2024. https://www.janineantoni.net/#/slumber/.
Dennett, Daniel C. 1976. “Are Dreams Experiences?” The Philosophical Review 85 (2): 151. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183728.
Mechling, Jay. 2021. Folklore and Transmarginal Consciousness.