Michelle Sumaray

Michelle Sumaray was born in 1988 in a small city in east Texas. She has a BA in Fine Arts from Christopher Newport University in Virginia and an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Much of Sumaray’s current work is rooted in the photographic image, though her approach is interdisciplinary and conceptually based, often touching on complex universal truths about time and death while maintaining a personal perspective.

Her work gets its momentum from familial artifacts and oscillates between attachment and estrangement. The definition of attachment tells us that it is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another person [or object or place] across time and space.

Culturally, we are expected to have, and maintain, a strong connection to our families over the course of our lifetime. Sumaray is interested in when this doesn’t happen—when these relationships transition from something intimate to something distant, fictional or superficial—and how that shift can impact our sense of identity and self-worth.