Plague Manifesto
Relic
Revelation
Joy Ray
Artist Statement
I grew up in a religious home, a preacher’s kid. My trust in organized religion has long since turned to skepticism, but questions of belief still fascinate me. What is the meaning of life? What if we never know for sure? What if everything we think we know is wrong?
For me, there is no more potent proof of what lies beyond human understanding than Nature. Deeply complex, brimming with mystery and power, its scope far exceeds the limits of our imaginations. We construct elaborate taxonomies to categorize every bird or reptile we find, but we still don’t know why they exist or how they came to be.
Inspired by this enigma, I create highly textured and layered paintings and sculptures resembling natural formations of stone and earth. I juxtapose these with marks indicating manmade systems of illusory and failing control. Symbols and glyphs reference divination, the act of seeking messages from the gods. I work primarily in shades of black and white, a diagrammatic, allegorical absence of color also used in Nōh theater, Commedia dell’arte, and black-and-white films created in the era of color. This transforms “color” into a signal, a contrast, a morality tale.
At its core, my work explores the desire to understand our place in the cosmos, which I see as tragicomic in its futility. How absurd to think that we can know anything about the eternal. But: how poetic, how human, to try.
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Joy Ray’s abstract textile paintings are defined by a bold, minimalist palette and richly textured materials including sand, wool and rusted metal. She lives and works in Hawai’i and Los Angeles, and exhibits internationally. Her work has been featured at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster CA, the Museum of Quilts and Textiles in San Jose CA, the Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hawaii State Art Museum, Art Basel Ping Pong, Shockboxx Project, Launch LA and bG Gallery. Joy Ray received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is held in th