Anthony Stellaccio

My artwork is tied to the confrontational aesthetic and psychic potency of West African, Vodun religious sculpture. Inevitably untethered from authenticity by whiteness, Western culture, and modernity, my works are surrogates for my own life (or death), and a form of advocacy against the neglect and marginalization of mental health in society.

The objects I create begin at sites of memory and mourning: a cemetery, my birthplace, the home of a loved one, or any site to which I can connect emotionally. From these spaces I collect artifacts and materials, sometimes leaving what I can in their place, and sometimes incorporating the sacrifice of irreplaceable objects into my work. This is an emotional and cathartic process of intake, exchange, and expulsion that is inextricably tied to place and mobility, found objects, containment, and preservation, attachment and release, and purification.

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