After the Tags (Digital Collage Series, 2025)

For years, I made digital “tags” small collages created for online forums, built from layers of images, textures, and text. It was a private and anonymous way to be creative, a quiet outlet to emotionally unwind the struggles of life. After the Tags carries that same language forward, expanding it beyond the small scale it came from. These works explore what happens when that early experimentation grows into something larger. When the impulse that once lived online becomes the foundation for a personal art practice.

The digital “tag” existed in a brief era of the internet. Small works made for no audience beyond their forum thread. They were fragments of identity, composed from low-resolution images and borrowed textures, shared among small creative communities. In revisiting that space, After the Tags treats those early online gestures as artifacts of a culture that valued process over polish, instinct over permanence.

The influence of tagging extends beyond this series. Every piece I make still carries that same language. The layering, compression, and instinct that defined those early digital experiments. My approach to composition, color, and rhythm comes from that world. After the Tags isn’t a return to nostalgia, but a recognition of where my visual identity was formed. Everything since has been made with the mindset of a tagger. Fast, intuitive, and deeply personal.