Sophia Poppy Ericksen is a transgender artist who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Delving into the intricate spaces that lie between different states of being, transitions, and metamorphoses, she explores the concepts of liminality and hauntology. Her artwork incorporates man-made structures and fragments, remnants of stories once known but now lost, interwoven into a contemporary narrative. By engaging with hauntological themes such as presence and absence, she seeks to explore the complexities of grief as the embodiment of an absence, and the nature of time as a singular, fleeting moment in the present, with the past and future existing only as memories or concepts. Her work traverses themes of gender identity, intimacy, childhood trauma, masculinity/femininity, war and violence.

Sophia’s creative process involves deconstructing elements to their core components, and reassembling them in a layered structure that conveys the depth of the ideas being expressed. This approach allows viewers to engage with multiple perspectives and angles, resulting in a rich tapestry of complex meaning that invites further exploration and reflection. Sophia works with mixed media, collage and assemblage using found and personal ephemera, with inks and various experimental processes in and out of the darkroom. 

Sophia’s most recent digital art series, “Glitch in the System” is a series of photographs portraying the psychological dissonance of pre-transition intimacy. The series was created with a digital alternative process, without photo editing software, using found video that has been scanned on a flatbed scanner timed to create the “glitch” effect, with subjects being altered based on the amount of time of movement versus stillness.