American Appraisal (2016 - 2020)
The "American Appraisal" series began as a direct response to my internal processing of the USA 2016 election, Tarana Burke's #MeToo movement and its new wave of momentum, and a phrase that was spoken to me by a cis-gendered, highly privileged, straight, white man in a work context: “Your value to us diminishes.” This phrase points to many issues present in the USA, especially when we consider the desperate need for continued effort of a truly intersectional feminism to counter the unfortunate pervasiveness of white-supremacist thought.
The notion of words as a smoke screen became particularly important for this body of work. In a country where specific phrasing and negative terminology is so often the root of discriminatory practices, the implication of militarizing the phrases used in this series felt more and more accurate a depiction of what so many groups have to wade through on a daily basis while existing as American. Masses of text become illegible but transform into human voices, crowds. The phrases used in this series are smoke screens, power ruses concealing other movement; at the same time, the phrases are melting, rendered as if losing power, losing substance. Militarization meets resistance; confinement meets overflow.
While scrutinizing and auditing what dictates my own relationship(s) to the word 'value' as an American, bisexual/queer, cis-gendered, white, woman artist within our current political climate, this body of work evolved. It became the "Capitalist Plaid" series, an examination of the larger consequences of late-stage capitalism within a society which commonly suggests that "value" is only reserved for that which is quantifiable.
