DePlour is a formally trained, multi-disciplinary Queer Artist currently residing in the Southern U.S. Their work seeks to diversify and expand normative visual languages by intertwining sculptural gestures with materiality, thereby providing a lens through which audiences engage with objects and performance as metaphor for personal and collective anxieties that expose trauma, violence and the struggle for survival in late stage capitalism.
DePlour’s interest and artistic focus began developing during their time performing in experimental bands and subculture art groups in D.C., New Orleans, and New York during the 90s and early 2000s. The body modification movement from this time period has been a through line through much of their work in all disciplines, where often the body acts as a catalyst and canvas for themes related to gender, bodily autonomy and rallying against oppressive institutions. They found a kinship in visual and performance artists such as Orlan, Ron Athey, Chris Burden, and Stelarc, and chose to leave behind their successful body modification practice to study Art on an academic level to better understand the rhetoric of different visual mediums and subjects.
Their current focus develops their use of the body as a vehicle for artistic expression by rendering sculptural form and figures through intense, altering, and durational rituals aimed at unlocking subconscious manifestations of their personal traumas. They use their body to break and form materials found within their immediate landscape, creating self referential relics that stand as monuments to both personal and cultural anxieties we all struggle to overcome as products of abuse and oppression.
jdeplour@jdeplour.com