Welcome to the Kamil Gallery Online which hosts exhibitions of UCSD Undergraduate Visual Arts Students
Skeletons
Laura Esbensen
Skin, acrylic paint on canvas. 2019.
Censor, acrylic paint on canvas. 2019.
Cavity, acrylic paint, ink and yarn on canvas. 2019.
Cavity, detail.
Cavity, detail.
Toxic and Growth, in installation.
Toxic, ink and colored pencil on paper. 2020.
Growth, ink and watercolor on paper. 2020.
Body (series), acrylic paint on wood panel. 2020.
Body (series), ink on paper. 2020.
Aura, house paint on canvas with yarn. 2020.
Bitter Taste, acrylic paint on canvas. 2020.
9.23.18 So for the first time in my life, I decided to swim. Like really swim. Swim for your life in a sea of what they told you wasn't possible until you can prove them wrong. Maybe it was the exhaustion that landed me in this dazed existence. Even good days hardly seemed like days at all.
(I'm not sure you could cut the fight out of me if you tried.)
Let my struggle, let my effort be a testament to the fact that when you offered me silence in pink capsules and told me I could not live without them, you were wrong.
11.25.19 I don't feel depression or mania the way I used to. I feel almost as if it were a negative, just an imprint of what was. But I feel as if this concavity carves out a lot of space in me, and despite it ultimately being empty from the violence of the past, it is heavy.
It would be naive to believe that it hadn't shaped me. It would be naive to believe that is isn't actively shaping me.
Despite it's dormancy.
Flesh Bound, ink and watercolor on paper. 2020.
Flesh Bound, acrylic paint on wood panel. 2020.
Dissonance, acrylic paint on wood panel. 2019.
Carnival I, ink and watercolor on paper. 2020.
Carnival II, ink and watercolor on paper, 2020.
Monster (series), in installation.
Monster I, ink and colored pencil on paper. 2020.
Monster II, ink and colored pencil on paper. 2020.
Monster III, ink and colored pencil on paper. 2019.
Sacrifice, acrylic paint and ink on paper. 2019.
Woman, ink and collage on paper. 2019.
Other Half, ink and colored pencil on paper. 2020.
all of these thoughts in my head, ink and colored pencil on paper. 2020.
About "Skeletons"
Laura Esbensen, emerging mixed media painter based in Southern California, started creating the work featured in "Skeletons" at a point in her life where she realized that a primary difference between living and existing is identity. Having lost her developmental adolescent years to an intense battle with mental illness, reaching her undergraduate studies indicated victory, the beginnings of recovery, and a major mental shift. It was time to figure out who she was, who she is. "Skeletons" deals with that question - what does it mean to be someone? To become someone? What does it mean to be mentally ill? How can identity be formed outside of this illness? How can this illness be embraced? What does this illness mean for femininity, for relationships? Esbensen hopes that her viewers will find connection in this work, as the questions are large and personal but more importantly, communal.