Layla Biby: Ontogeny
Artist Statement
Layla Biby is a Columbia-based artist currently pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Her work centers on her father’s dementia and her own early childhood experiences, examining how memory, loss, and emotional inheritance shape personal identity. Working primarily in 2D mixed media, Biby incorporates a wide range of materials and processes, frequently experimenting with line, layered imagery, and expressive color. Her practice is deeply rooted in nostalgia; not as simple longing, but as a fragile, distorted recollection shaped by time, grief, and fading memory. She is especially interested in how childhood spaces, objects, and moments become altered through remembrance, often blurring the line between what is remembered, what is imagined, and what is lost.
Through these layered and intimate compositions, Biby creates work that evokes grief, tenderness, and emotional fragmentation, inviting viewers into deeply personal yet universally resonant narratives about love, absence, and the quiet ache of remembering.
About the Project
- Title of Work: Ontogeny
- Medium: 4 10"x8" etchings to display on wall, side by side.
- Student's Name: Layla Biby
- Major: Art
- Anticipated Graduation Date: 28-May
- Hometown: Gainesville, Missouri
- Student's Mentor: Christopher Daniggelis
- Mentor's Department: Art
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