FOR SALE
This cycle of work explores identity construction in an American context; the ways in which corpocracy influences our relationships with ourselves, others, and our environment. It understands abstractly and generally how we create ourselves through the products and clothing we curate for ourselves, taking a stab at fashioning the national body through end-stage capitalism and a failing ecosystem. What’s left of the American Dream in this climate? It’s a fantasy rather than a tangible truth, divinely gifted through living within the borders.
This project is a cycle of works interrogating our current conditions through appropriated stock imagery tesselating from sculpture to flat plane, and a capsule collection of garments and accessories captured in a digitally formatted catalog. Deeply influenced by the litany of images we encounter within our daily lives, stock photography (digitally printed on various media) sits at the apex within the hierarchy of this project for their direct linkage to screens via their digital patina. FOR SALE acts as both a critique and appreciation of American consumer/corporate culture. It recognizes the awful and incorrigible nature of United States corpocracy digested through the lens of dry, post-ironic humor and camp.This project features both post-consumer materials (banner ads, tee shirts, socks, rope) and new industrial materials (Silicones, resin, liquid plastic) put into a fashion context, tying the work into conversations of manufacturing waste culture and the usefulness of discarded products as material source while relating back to the larger investigations throughout.
The American Dream is in flux: it never existed as it was promised and currently lives as a fungible set of ideas changing between individuals, it’s abstracted. It can’t be defined, but it can be described. It smells like marlboro reds and laundry detergent, like ozone and diesel. It feels like turning on the radio to an endless ad break with personalities yelling at you in incoherent phrases. It feels like sitting in the back of a Ford F-150 on your laptop with no connection, scrolling through the preset images. It sounds like the incessant laugh track of a 40 second video.
