a.k.a. skips

I’m a.k.a. skips, a Rotterdam-based painter, musician, photographer, and porn performer interested in Destruction as a means to creation.

I was born in San Francisco, where my selftaught visual art practice began on the streets as a teenage delinquent in the graffiti scene – destroying property. I taught myself to produce music with a cheap copy of Logic Pro 6 at the age of 13.

I received a BFA in Recorded Music from NYU and graduated at the age of 20 with honors and an award from my department.

Throughout my 20s I toured the world as a DJ and musician. In 2021 I retired from music to begin my gender transition in private,

Destroying the project I had spent more than half of my life building to create a more authentic self. My photography book “i want to rest and be held by someone who loves me” was a eulogy for the first 30 years of my life, memorializing the many acts of self-Destruction required to live inauthentically.

Today, my visual art practice builds on my street art foundation with figurative oil and acrylic painting. I focus primarily on my nude body as the subject, both in intimate moments alone and in motion as a sex worker – a practice of the Destruction of societal expectations and the shame they create. I focus on single moments, Destroying the context of past and future to create space for the split-second itself to expand.

Though nude, my body is not presented in line with trans fetishization or conversely, to show how “well” I have transitioned to a binary standard (often a measure of value). The viewer is invited into my own, ever-changing selfimage, and left with the question of how they relate. I have begun additionally to explore themes of anonymity, desire, and masculinity, and what Destruction is inherent to each.

I have also begun incorporating short texts into my work. My current works in process and planned pieces also include short video projects and 3-dimensional works.