Mickey Haldi
Arist Statement
Perception is reality, varying according to our sociological experiences in reverberation with our psychological navigation. My paintings mimic the way I experience life: working with what I know, questioning that knowing through the manipulation of material, moving intuitively, and strategizing with the acceptance that my outcome could be unsuccessful. The materials I elect to use are flexible and must be willing to bend in various ways. Each has a narrative attached to their quality. I enjoy maintaining the material’s history while controlling the outcome, much like how we are amalgamations of experience, collecting new meaning as we enter various contexts. Similar to how light relies on dark, I understand myself through others and I understand others through myself. The spaces between these interconnected extremes, the information that suspends in nuance, is where my work exists.
About Mickey Haldi
Mickey Haldi has always called the Pacific Northwest their home. Having lived in Boise, Idaho and Bellingham, Washington before settling in Missoula, Montana, their art reflects on issues pertaining to identity, specifically what it means to pursue boundless perimeters while simultaneously experiencing societal constraints, norms, and unspoken rules.
As a non-binary, queer, and neurodivergent person, navigating the self and its response to given environments is an overarching investigation in Haldi’s paintings. Through art they are asking broad questions about personal experience: “What does it mean to be me at this intersection? What does it mean to be you, at yours?”
Haldi has been a contributor to the arts scene in Missoula since 2015, exhibiting solo and in group settings and working in arts settings like Zootown Arts Community Center and The Montana Museum of Art and Culture. They recently graduated from the University of Montana in the Spring of 2021 with their Bachelor of Arts degree with a minor in art history. Haldi aspires to sustain a lifelong journey as a practicing artist.