Is trauma tangible? My thesis will examine my experiences with trauma and the influence it has on my practice as a visual artist. I define trauma as the reaction to physical and emotional experiences of distress, abuse, and neglect, that invaded mind and body. My traumatic memories remain subconsciously hidden, an instinctive 'survival instinct' failsafe ingrained into my psyche, that files away many unbearable experiences, only to be evoked and experienced in the present by a trigger. For me, domestic space is often that trigger. Throughout the reflective analysis of my childhood traumas, I showcase the allegorical stories, signifiers and themes of a broken home. My work brings material poetic forms to the intangible aspects of trauma, using materials and domestic references to bring a new coherence to traumatic memories. In doing so, I seek to exorcize the "negative" spaces of my past and produce a sculptural environment that evokes ideas about childhood, home, neglect and, ultimately, care. In this written thesis, I will discuss domestic and familial themes within social sciences, contemporary art and personal experiences; I will expound upon my creative process, influences and self-discoveries around trauma that inform my current practice as an artist.

This thesis explores my relationship to artmaking through the exploration of my identity. As a gay, Puerto-Rican, Argentinian, American man, my relationship to art has always been a way for me to make sense of my intersectional experiences. Chronologically recounting past and current bodies of work, I explain how my personal growth coincides with my artwork. From once shameful, hidden figures to later flamboyant, unapologetic bodies, this thesis links the sequential evolution of my figuration and ideas. I also investigate the process of reclaiming moments in art history as being inherently queer and explore the ways in which they manifest in my own work. Additionally, I expand on formal aspects like composition, color, and mode of making, and how this interacts with the content in my work. Through this recounting and analyzation of my work, I invite viewers to empathize with the universality of my queer experience.

This thesis combines photography, mixed media, and installation to explore the interrelation between art, memory, and culture; specifically, as they relate to (in)visibility and the stigma surrounding mass incarceration. Things that are compulsory are obligatory; they require that we follow a rule or law, but they also may be coercive or compelling. Compulsory, therefore, is defined alternately as something that is required and something that is irresistible. These definitions imply both desire and regulation, and these forces are often internalized and self-imposed. Following these definitions and their connotations, this thesis, titled Compulsory, combines photography and mixed media installation to explore those things that are required whether by an institution or by one's own psyche and those things that are desirable either individually or as determined by normative values. Specifically, the works collected for this exhibition examine my personal compulsions as well as the state-mandated requirements imposed upon me by the Florida Department of Corrections during my incarceration, by Child and Family Services and the court system during my ongoing custody battle, and by University of Central Florida during my studies for this and previous degrees. These compulsory circumstances have inspired me to create work that makes the neglected visible and finds beauty in pain.

Growing up in an image-based society with television, computer screens, and a massive swell of visual media leaves me overloaded with imagery and information. I seek to find beauty in the strangeness of interconnected nostalgia of family memories, loss and grief, escapism, and video games. I process and excavate my personal history by romanticizing memories, relationships, and the passage of time. I do this with constructed visual worlds created through the physical processes of drawing, bookbinding, ceramics, printmaking, and painting. I use references and influences from 20th-century artists Paul Klee, James Ensor, and Jim Nutt to connect and interweave video game graphics, archeological references, and contemporary cartooning as methods to transcend biography for an archetype of 21st-century life. I blend contemporary sources of images from media, digital research methods, and physical art making as a foundation of my studio practice and teaching philosophy.

Danielle Culibao Powell manifests the disconnectedness of a second-generation immigrants' cultural disorientation into colorful collage paintings, reconciling cultural history with contemporary identity while building a connection between herself and her parents' homeland the Philippines. The evolution of Powell's studio art practice follows entering a transcultural marriage and researching the art created by the Filipino women artists before her. This thesis documents that evolution both visually and conceptually. It elaborates the history of both the cannons of Western Art and lesser-known Filipina art and expressed in art rooted in cultural plurality.

This thesis documents my evolving understanding of my identity through an examination of my family histories, which I explored throughout my graduate studies in a series of figures in imaginary landscapes. As a Black woman scholar and a second-generation child of immigrants from Martinique and growing up in the Florida suburbs, I am constantly negotiating my space in the southern American landscape. This research addresses the autobiographical discoveries I make regarding the intersections of womanhood, sexuality, class, and how gender roles influence the spaces I inhabit. It elaborates the evolution of thought through figuration, visual symbols, and the abstraction of the landscape. These works are expressed through a variety of media including printmaking, painting, and drawing.

My artwork aims to create an ephemeral world filled with metaphorical materials. I examine and use my own experiences and perspectives, presenting fluctuations between childhood and adulthood. The personal objects that represent these times frame an implied sentience. The objects, gathered and installed in specific groupings, connote familial relationships.

The world around us is in a continual state of change; we, as humans, are agents of change simply through our existence. Moreover, our choices become catalysts of change and have profound effects on our environments. This paper will use the chemical formula of glycolysis as an extended metaphor to expound the notion of the human existence in a continual state of change. C6H12O6 + 6(O2) -- > 6(CO2) + 6(H2O) + ATP The above chemical formula represents glycolysis, a chemical reaction during which glucose (C6H12O6) and oxygen (6O2) combine to produce carbon dioxide (6CO2), water (6H2O), and energy (ATP). This is the first step in aerobic cellular respiration, a process that all complex organisms use to convert nutrients into usable energy. This formula metaphorically illustrates my creative process. Glucose represents the fabrication process through the combination of concepts (C6), materials (H12), and interactions (O6), with the addition of my own interactions with my environment (6O2) to produce a conceptual experience (6CO2) with a physically interactive component (6H2O) to elicit change (ATP). However, as in aerobic respiration, glycolysis is simply the first step; my finished work is only a beginning.

As a Cape Verdean American, I investigate the idea of what it means to be of the African Diaspora in America. I also consider the experiences of past generations of American black bodies and how their history has molded my world. This series of work began with Mask Drawing 1, an ink drawing inspired by my own interpretation of an African mask. Subjected to colorism, the discrimination of a person based on their skin color, my skin was not enough validation for other people to view me as black. On numerous occasions I have had to clarify my identity, nationality and how these things qualify me as black. I was not perceived as black because I did not fit the stereotype society influenced us to believe, that black people all look, walk and talk a certain way. I did not fit because my skin was not dark enough, my hair wasn't the same texture, and my last name was Santos. This led me to question how I present myself versus how other individuals may perceive me. I wanted to create new artifacts that highlighted my experience of blackness in America. Through the abstraction of these artifacts I explore black identities and how they have change society for black people.

My objective, in undertaking this three year MFA degree has been to create and produce metaphorical paintings which communicate my deepest feelings about my personal experiences of life, death, and nature using various types of landscapes as subject matter. My goal has been to explore many processes of painting, using a range of color palettes to suggest and inspire emotional responses from viewers that are similar to my own. Ultimately my intention has been to share feelings of empathy between myself and a viewer through the art I've produced. This thesis body of work chronicles my three year journey.