ROY presents: Torey Akers

Call Me

My current work updates the Victorian tradition of Lover's Eyes—achingly intimate but anonymous depictions of a beloved's face to be worn as brooches or hat ornaments—into pin-pricked relief sculptures that serve both as reliquaries and worry dolls, nodding to the post-digital condition of longing. I am invested in what it means to miss somebody in 2021, which procedures count as devotional, what reinterpretation looks like in the endless stream of visual flotsam we consume on a daily basis, and how all of those concerns square with the legacy of colonialism embedded in Romantic luxury items.

ROY asks

1) What is your name and preferred pronouns?

Torey Akers, she/her

2) How has art (whether it be your own or art in general) changed you?

Art has made me a more thoughtful, critical, and motivated person. It's also given me a lot of practice with resilience!

3) How did you start your artistic practice?

I started my practice doodling as a kid, and I've been making stuff ever since.

4) When a first-time viewer sees your work, what is the first word that you hope they think when looking at it?

Not necessarily a word, but I always hope viewers gasp.