SOCIETY OF GLASS WALLS

 

This is a series of small oil paintings where the viewer becomes an integral part of the artwork. The viewer is the protagonist, participating as the voyeur who gazes out onto scenes that I have painstakingly reproduced…

Scenes that they may slowly realize are familiar…

Seemingly quotidian happenings that their mind had normalized…

Zooming in on hardships that their eyes darted and dodged without really seeing.

Because to see, is to witness…

to confront the truth of the systems of unequal suffering that created their privilege. 

To make plain, the cognitive dissonance between their innate compassion and the suffering that their life choices perpetuate.

Sitting at a café, strolling down the lanes of an airconditioned grocery store, sheltered from the sun, shielded from the dust, elevated from the grind of those who serve. Looking out the glass panes, but never letting their eyes linger too long… lest the truth that’s right in front of them, tarnishes the beauty of their privilege.

Standing before these paintings, here, now, we go back to those seemingly mundane moments, look afresh at what we have normalized, what we may mistakenly call subtle, but is in truth, the tragic failure of a society. What was meant to be a nation of the people, by the people, for the people, stands today as a dystopian trickle-down socioeconomic system where air, water, food, shelter, clothing, and dignity are the birthright of the few.v