Michelle Dakan

Artist Statement:

My work expresses the relationship between my internal and external worlds. It seeks to create contemplative spaces where memory, place, and the body intersect—images that are both familiar and unsettled, held together by the process of placing and layering personal and collective symbols. Process is central to my practice. Layering ink, playing with texture, and form, creating a sense of depth that creates movement between the foreground and background, inside and outside. I am excited by this ambiguity and play.

My medium is primarily monotypes, creating and reusing stencils that I cut and layer repeatedly to build surfaces. I work directly on the plate, each placing and lifting of a stencil carries traces of what came before—erasures, overlaps, and imperfections remain visible, allowing the image to evolve. This method is intuitive and I respond to the surface after it comes through the press, often adding another element or layer. This process mirrors the nature of lived experience. Spaces and identities are constructed and shaped by change, repetition, and time.