We recently connected with Empress Trash and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Empress, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
It stems from basic will to survive really. I pull a lot of my strength from my ancestors – I’m of Nordic/viking descent mostly mixed with French Canadian and Indigenous. I think about all the different things my ancestors went through to culminate in my existence and when I may not feel highly about myself, I still wish to honor them, their struggles and my own by always continuing. It’s also an innate stubbornness and will to win, and my parameters for winning are just getting up each morning and continuing on. I’ve survived a lot of extreme situations and should be dead a few times over, so even at my lowest points I’m grateful to be alive and don’t take it for granted.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Here is my standard bio:
Empress Trash (Drea Jay) is a multi versatile visual artist currently residing in Mexico City with her rottweiler Glitch. A lifelong artist, she earned her BFA in Painting, Drawing, and Animation/Design from the University of Iowa in 2014. Shortly after, she moved to the Bay Area which she assisted and worked alongside a multitude of local and international artists and shows including Ai Wei Wei’s show on Alcatraz, being a member of the Firehouse Art Collective run by Tom Franco, and running her own underground shows from her house. She started in crypto art in 2021 and since has been exhibited internationally including Sotheby’s, NYC, Paris, Palm Springs, Miami Art Basel, LA, SXSW, Mexico City, Melbourne and Ted Talks Conference in Vancouver.
The Empress portion of her name represents her ongoing search for sovereignty and elevated autonomy since she left home and emancipated herself from her extremely physically, mentally, sexually and spiritually abusive Schizophrenic, addict mother at the age of 13, while Trash stands for her aesthetic and her roots as “trailer trash”. Art for her is the only constant in a tumultuous life and a safe space to confront demons from a highly isolated, oppressive and chaotic upbringing while still appreciating the beauty in herself and the world.
As a process orientated artist, Empress embraces abstraction, surrealism, trash, glitch art, and AI. She utilizes radical expressionism and self-acceptance to further her journey of self discovery while exploring topics of feminity, consumerism and mass media. She believes in peeling back the veneer of reality to allow for exploration of the subconscious meta connections between the emotional, physical, mental, sexual and spiritual realms.
As to new, I’m always creating new art and working on exhibitions.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Art, persistence and being open minded. Art is the constant in my life and brings me together with other people while being a safe place for me to express myself. I am where I am because of persistence while having an open mind has allowed me to see all the possibilities.
Advice to people just starting out is just keep going and don’t let fear guide the way.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
When I feel overwhelmed I let myself be overwhelmed and actually feel it instead of avoiding it. I embrace the chaos. I let myself breakdown, cry, and scream. Emotions are just energy and they need to flow. I don’t pretend everything is alright because so many horrible things sit in pretending everything is okay.
I do a lot of somatic exercises now to help regulate my nervous system and do a lot of self care to increase my bandwidth as much as possible and be proactive before overwhelm. However, accepting overwhelm inevitably happens, and being kind to myself is the practice of radical self love that really changes me and the world around me.
Contact Info:
- Website: empresstrash.xyz
- Instagram: @empress_trash
- Linkedin: empress trash
- Twitter: @empresstrash
