In the United States, the years 2016-2020 are an unprecedented moment in our national history. We find our democracy and the rule of law itself imperiled, while the machinations orchestrating the decline of Western liberalism are murky at best. Much like the “summer of love” or “Watergate,” historians will undoubtedly define this period (for better or worse) as a watershed. But for those of us living through the upheaval of the era without the benefit of their hindsight, we as yet have no language to explain the enormity and complexity of the sociopolitical tumult that besets us daily.
Politicollage is a phenomenological response to the uncertainty of the time, one that gives form to otherwise overwhelming social and political forces. Combining cutouts from popular media of the day with my own personal photographs, I assemble visual allegories that filter touchstones of our shared experience from the noise. Much of the breakneck change around us has global impact: to immigration, our climate, trade, and democratic alliances. Underscored in my photo-collages are our deep national fissures, international predicaments, collective resistance to regressive powers and our shifting conceptions of identity as they clash with outdated norms that seek to contain their expression. Politicollage is a statement, one that cannot yet be shaped by words, of what it is like to live through the present moment in our history.
Politicollage is a phenomenological response to the uncertainty of the time, one that gives form to otherwise overwhelming social and political forces. Combining cutouts from popular media of the day with my own personal photographs, I assemble visual allegories that filter touchstones of our shared experience from the noise. Much of the breakneck change around us has global impact: to immigration, our climate, trade, and democratic alliances. Underscored in my photo-collages are our deep national fissures, international predicaments, collective resistance to regressive powers and our shifting conceptions of identity as they clash with outdated norms that seek to contain their expression. Politicollage is a statement, one that cannot yet be shaped by words, of what it is like to live through the present moment in our history.