Artist Statement
I am a digital mixed-media artist whose practice evolved outside traditional academic pathways, shaped by long-term observation, self-directed study, and daily engagement with the visual residue of lived experience. My background spans street photography, archival research, and digital composition, each discipline informing the others over time. Fragments are gathered through an act of soulful recognition to bear witness to what endured in the broken, carrying it with care, even if only briefly.
Much of my work begins with walking, noticing, and collecting. I photograph street life, work with vintage and found imagery, study ancient and native visual languages. These materials are not treated as historical artifacts but as living treasures, holding emotional and cultural weight. The process is intuitive and responsive, never approached with premeditated intent.
Digital tools entered my practice not in pursuit of polish or permanence, but as a means of assembly. They allow me to layer, erode, and reframe images in ways that mirror memory and survival. I am drawn to what is worn, discarded, or quietly enduring—places where time has left visible scars.
Over years of sustained making, the work has become a form of witnessing. It resists a fixed aesthetic identity, allowing each piece to determine its own visual language. What remains constant is the care with which fragments are held, connected, and released, so that what was never meant to be archived might still be seen.
— Suhni California
[in Latin "sacrifice" is sacrificium, sacer = sacred, facere = to make]
[alchemy is the transmutation of one or more elements into another]
