William Bossen

Lives and works in Houston, TX, USA

Artist statement

My multidisciplinary practice in photography, video, and printmaking explores the interplay of memory, identity, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world, weaving personal insights into universal reflections. Through an auto-ethnographic approach, I examine my lived experiences to question how they shape my perceptions and connect that insight into broader cultural and environmental dynamics. Inspired by Pierre Noras “lieux de memoire” and Marianne Hirschs “postmemory”, I investigate how personal and collective histories mold our worldview. I see memory as dynamic, contained events, like cubist paintings where every angle reveals recursive layers of meaning, space, and time. I relentlessly ask “why” in order to unravel how our actions imprint on the environment and others. My work challenges assumptions about identity and our ecological footprint that I hope bridges individual reflection with collective dialogue about resilience and shared existence. Using structural symbolism, I endeavor to reflect the tension between creation and decay, permanence and impermanence to question why we impose control on nature’s rhythms, only to highlight its vulnerabilities. Taking these observations into spaces of hope and critique, I try to engage with the environment’s resilience and humanity’s complex impact.

Artwork