Statement

 Von Ahsen’s work explores the body as a vessel. A temporary architecture through which memory, identity, desire, and spiritual consciousness move. Working with analog collage, she constructs interior worlds where figures exist within thresholds, suspended between states of becoming. 

Domestic rooms, nature, frames, curtains and transitional spaces function as psychic environments rather than settings. These spaces hold the tension between the self performed for survival and the deeper self pressing to emerge. The work remains in that unstable middle ground, where identity has begun to loosen but has not yet reorganized. 

A recurring presence emerges throughout the work, an oversoul, surrounding or pressing against the figure. It appears as a field, a doubling, or a subtle disturbance within void space. This presence functions as a force of internal reorganization, shaping how identity shifts, fractures, or reforms. 

This visual language emerges from nearly three decades of direct experience & research into consciousness, transformation, and the nature of perception. That inquiry is rooted in time spent studying with monks in India and sitting in ceremony with the master plant, Ayahuasca, in Peru’s Sacred Valley under the guidance of Maestras. It’s a working, embodied understanding of consciousness as fluid, of the self as permeable, of perception as something that can be expanded, destabilized, and reconstructed. Her current research extends into contemporary philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and spiritual frameworks examining parallel states of being. 

Recent work draws from folklore as a system for crossing. Veils, guardians, and thresholds appear not as symbols but as active conditions. Figures are often doubled, partially obscured, suspended, or caught between states of becoming, while the oversoul moves through the work, surrounding, echoing, or pressing against the figure as a force of internal reorganization shaping how identity shifts, fractures, dissolves, or reforms. The work resists resolution, staying inside the charged interval where transformation is already underway and the oversoul and body are learning to move as one.

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 Chelsea Hotel, she transitioned from photography to analog collage, cutting and layering images to reimagine symbols of identity, femininity, and spiritual becoming.

Her work is shaped by a lifelong engagement with transformation, moving through queer identity, altered states, and spiritual inquiry. Studies with monks in India, ceremonies in Peru’s Sacred Valley, and years inside New York’s downtown art world inform a practice that blends the intimate with the mythic.

Fusing pop culture, vintage imagery, and mystical storytelling, von Ahsen creates cinematic interior worlds where the self feels unstable, fluid, and in motion. Her collages operate as quiet portals, inviting viewers into a space where memory, desire, and parallel realities begin to overlap.

She has exhibited in New York at Amos Eno Gallery, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, Pen + Brush and Prince Street Project Space, she continues to work from her studio in the East Village.