Arabella is an interdisciplinary artist based in Eugene, OR, who works primarily with repurposed materials in fiber and sculpture works. In 2021, they began studying at the University of Oregon as an Environmental Studies major. A growing interest in pursuing sustainable fashion led them to transfer to the University of Cincinnati DAAP for Fashion Design in 2022, where they also taught aerial yoga and sold upcycled clothing at house shows and concerts. In 2023, Arabella returned to the University of Oregon for a BFA in Fiber Arts with a minor in Environmental Studies, working to merge these various disciplines and critical insights gained from these experiences into an artistic reflection on fiber, fashion, labor, consumption, distance, embodiment/disembodiment, disability, invisibility/visibility, and more. They also volunteer at the Materials Exchange Center for Creative Arts (MECCA) in Eugene, which is a secondhand art-supply store, gallery, shared workspace, and community gathering place for local artists.
Autistically, Arabella is not interested in extrapolating a singular experience or sensation of an event to create more digestible narratives. They aim to explore new means of communicating autistic experiences of the world through multi-sensory and multimedia works, as well as multi-layered narratives. They view this creative process of intentional layering as an act of alignment with other non-linear, non-hierarchical methods and theories of rethinking, deconstructing, and redistributing power amongst all marginalized peoples.
This includes themes such as queer politics and imagination, disability justice, decolonial feminism, necropolitics, pluriverse design, Land Back, craftivism, and more. The refusal to extrapolate any of these influences from another is an attempt by the artist to maintain the non-binary nature of these experiences and ideas, as well as to highlight shared connections and patterns between them across differing cultures and communities. Arabella’s art will never perfectly reflect any one of these ideas, but rather points to them and their close positionality alongside each other in a map of shared experiences to encourage deeper reflection of patterns. What happens when we artistically and autiscally examine the shared human potentials and shared human struggles of our transnational existence?