Halley Zien’s claustrophobic interiors hold in suspension the tense juxtaposition between external appearances and internal experiences. Inspired by performative traditions that use expressive masks as a vehicle to plumb the depths of humanity, her exaggerated figures use their distortion to telegraph hidden emotional truths. Peopling images taken from architectural digest magazine with these feverishly uninhibited characters is one way she portrays this conflict between idealized representations of home and what actually plays out interpersonally while life is being lived. Constantly challenging herself to create images that speak to life’s ceaseless flux, she uses fabric from cast-off clothing to create raised surfaces, playing with the notion of multidimensionality as a representation of organisms coming in and out of being. The sewn parts of the panel burst forth from the two-dimensional plane as a visual manifestation of something long buried being thrust aggressively to the surface. Her use of collage often alters the painted image in such a way as to suggest numerous perspectives on the same object and can be seen as reflecting the infinite ways one interprets their environment given the variability of shifting psychological states. The union of all these disparate mediums creates a snapshot of existence that’s teeming with movement, depicting a dizzying celebration of life, both grotesque and glorious.