In 2019 I went to a Walmart and impulsively bought a pack of oil blotting strips. My partner at the time told me they were great for removing excess oil from my face, especially my nose and "t-zone."

 

The work is both a culmination of act of care towards oneself and a critique of the obscure beauty routines that I have often felt pressured to take part of. The oil on my face has to go, it clogs my pours, and it makes my nose shiny. But, the oil on my nose is a part of me. Every strip serves as a record of myself through time that I can look back at.

 

Looking back at the grotesque, or the parts of me that I am told I should discard, creates a record of my material existence that solidifies my place in the physical world and brings attention to my own materiality. By being archive, the grotesqueness of myself, or my materiality, has value imposed onto it and the lack of sophistication that it has. The archive creates the threshold that allows us to question what is grotesque and why we see it as that.