Ashe develops art to articulate the intricate components of identity and belonging. Each of Ashe’s varied methodologies — predominantly photography, painting, and performance — are interconnected approach vectors to interrogate the politics of space and identity construction. Ashe’s oeuvre is pinned by recurrent motif that builds this positionality — the body as a political site, the national flag as a semiotic cocoon, and the playful interweaving of western art canon beats. These recurrent themes — in combination with their interdisciplinary approaches — results in a raw exploration of the vulnerabilities and confrontations to understanding one’s place in the world.

 

In their work, Ashe demarcates an ‘unmarginalised’ place through visual confrontation. Foregoing subtlety for the actively declamatory, the artist does not necessarily intend to offend, but instead builds work that pushes social boundaries. Their poetic interweaving of the personal and political invites the audience in — pulling at and questioning what socio-political barriers exist, and where the viewers might sit within them.

 

Ashe’s investigation of 'the body’ is central to their provocations. It is tended to, and wrapped and unwrapped — both depicted nude in performance and photo-media work — but also strategically covered in semiotically-rich substrates. In order to further indicate the shifting components of individuality and positionality, the artist playfully treats their body and the bodies of their performers interchangeably. Even Ashe’s mononym — used both privately and publicly — furthers such exploration. The term itself playfully alluding to, and obscuring gender via pronoun.