Hegemony or Survival

While using the Post 9/11 GI Bill I was introduced to ideas surrounding institutional power structures, particularly ones found throughout the history of art, e.g., the Church, the State, diplomats, statesmen, businessmen, etc. I began to collaborate with other veteran-artist, combining their personal history, our shared histories, and their personal belongings (iconography) from service. This project became a marriage of shared interests and biographies.The process of making these photos is a group effort. We share experiences that are intimately familiar to us yet foreign to many around us, especially for those of us who were recently home from deployment. It is important for me to make work around that experience with people who understand it. The method of juxtaposing motifs and narratives from the History of Art with contemporary military-culture is a vehicle to look at American Patriotism through the luxury and burden of time.This is both an aesthetic and critical decision as painting and photography have been manipulated, historically, to perpetuate idealized narratives of political “Truths.”