Statement

Tracy von Ahsen’s work moves through the architecture of identity, presence, and choice. Her analog collages, built from familiar symbols — chairs, curtains, fashion relics — shape spaces where selfhood is fluid and mythic. These images aren't static scenes; they’re psychic spaces, layered with memory, style, and the constant invitation to shift reality.

Working with the tactile immediacy of hand-cut collage, von Ahsen filters fashion, nostalgia, and pop language through a deeply intuitive lens. Her feminine figures are stripped of performance, stepping beyond personality into raw presence — not faceless, but in a state of choosing. She pulls from her history — New York City’s friction and freedom, spiritual awakenings in India and Peru and childhood rituals of survival on Long Island, weaving it all into dreamlike, cinematic narratives.

At the core, her work asks: How much of the life we inherit do we keep? How much do we cut and reassemble into something new?

Each collage becomes a portal, a constructed reality, where transformation isn't a metaphor — it’s the material.

Bio

Tracy von Ahsen (b. 1981, Long Island, NY) is a New York City–based artist whose work collages presence, memory, and self-reinvention. After earning a photography degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology and living at the iconic Chelsea Hotel, she transitioned from photography to analog collage — cutting, layering, and reimagining symbols of identity, femininity, and spirituality.

Von Ahsen’s work is shaped by personal transformation: her navigation through addiction, recovery, queer identity, and spiritual awakening. Her studies with monks in India, ceremonies in Peru’s Sacred Valley, and years immersed in New York’s downtown art scene form the undercurrent of her practice.

Fusing pop culture, vintage aesthetics, and mystical storytelling, her pieces channel the surreal textures of city life, while inviting a quieter dialogue about the nature of reality and personal mythmaking.

She has exhibited work in NYC at Amos Eno Gallery, Van Der Plas Gallery the Leslie-Lohman Museum, and Prince Street Project Space. She continues to create from her studio in the East Village.