Hegemony or Survival

While using the Post-9/11 GI Bill, I was introduced to ideas surrounding institutional power structures, those that have shaped the history of art such as the Church, the State, diplomats, statesmen, and businessmen. During this time, I began collaborating with other veteran-artists, weaving together their personal histories, our shared experiences, and the belongings and iconography they carried from their service. The project became a meeting point of mutual interests and intertwined biographies. The process of making these photographs is fundamentally collaborative. We share experiences that feel intimately familiar to us yet remain foreign to many around us, especially for those of us newly returned from deployment. It is important to me that the work be created with people who understand that reality. Juxtaposing motifs and narratives from the history of art with contemporary military culture becomes a way of examining American patriotism, through both the luxury and the burden of time. This approach is simultaneously aesthetic and critical. Painting and photography have long been used to construct and reinforce idealized political “truths,” and this project engages that history