America likes to pretend it’s a country without a grim history, that its self-proclaimed exceptionalism makes it free from anything too dark. But, of course, that’s not true. The hall of mirrors was constructed with an American Indian atop it because whoever built it could be reasonably certain no one would care if it was offensive. Those who might care are mostly sequestered on reservations or died generations ago. And you, if you’re an American, live on the land you live on because they died.
The lens of America’s general inability to deal with the genocide lurking in its root system, something dark is covered up by something glossy, and we celebrate the glossy surface.
These paintings explore the times and places of such cruelty that the mask slipped, where a raw scab peeled back and showed the truer face of America.
