Installation: Shrines for Troubled Times

exhibit statement - 2016

The past year has seen an assault on everything I value. People who despise government have secured their own place in it – the better to eat you, my dear. I’ve become a news junkie; I’m afraid to turn away. It feels imperative to be constantly updated in case Something Really Bad finally goes down. And it goes down every damn day. Lingche. Death by a thousand tiny cuts. It’s torturous.

The dehumanization of women, immigrants, people of color, scientists, educators and liberals, and the devaluation of education, journalism, international relations and national norms has battered and bruised all of us; we’re experiencing a national trauma. It’s been exhausting and demoralizing. But we’re on the edge of something, at a crossroads. We will either stand against tyranny, fascism, racism, nationalism, sexism, bigotry and ignorance, or we will be engulfed by it. We will either decide that information, education, honesty, ethics and morals have a place in both the private and the public spheres, or we will shrug and turn on reruns of The Apprentice.

I grew up in a political family. My mother was a 16-year-old union organizer in the Bay Area shipyards during WWII. My father both served in WWII and marched against the Vietnam war. The first time I precinct walked in my hometown of Sparks, Nevada, I wasn’t old enough to vote yet, but I had some very positive, sincere and heartfelt opinions about Jimmy Carter to share. I have never not been political, never not been actively agitating for or against something. It’s the primary value my parents instilled in all of us; the personal IS the political, and we all are obligated to participate as active citizens.

But I don’t know what to be afraid of any more. Just a few months ago I advised my 22-year-old daughter to keep a case of water and some maps in her car, just in case. “In case of WHAT?” she asked, alarmed. I couldn’t say, still can’t. There is just this overwhelming feeling of dread that is fed by the madness of Donald J. Trump and the opportunistic shrugging indifference of the entire Republican party as they aid and abet the dismantling of pretty much everything that we pretend we stand for. Quick! Stock up on water!

My installation, Shrines for Troubled Times, is a response to the collective trauma we are experiencing. This is a kitschy, art history infused collection of mixed-media, found/fabricated object sculptures that offer protection and defense against the deeply dysfunctional, frighteningly incompetent criminal cabal that currently squats, obscenely, in The People’s House.

VOTE.