What got me started on all this was not a quest for truth or justice, or anything so big an idea. It was the Mueller report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. So much of it had been redacted, taken away from the public’s view. And while I do admit I wanted desperately to know what tales were being told beneath the redaction markings, as an artist I was really fascinated by the style and color codings of the markings themselves. It was the aesthetic form before function that grabbed me. So I grabbed back, manipulating them in size, orientation and color, just like the report had been manipulating us, the people. And what became was a tie. And then a tee. And it was exciting, doing all this while the world held its breath, imagining what truths and tales lay waiting beneath the markings. And then came that big summer day, when the truth was to be told, when the man himself, Robert S. Mueller, would come to congress and to the American people with his truth we hoped was ours too. And while he did speak it that day, it wasn’t what we wanted or needed. What a let down! We needed more, gasped for more, having endured such a long, long time without air. We just wanted our sense of dignity back, by any means necessary.
I was left with pages and pages of my original works staring at me, daring me to do more. I imagined them speaking. But I no longer had the hunger inside or the need to know what lay beneath those markings, or even care. For it seemed to me that once again, injustice had won and truth had taken a back seat. And while the rest of that day felt hollow, in the night’s haunted hours what slowly rose inside me was a restlessness, the need to resist. I woke up to a reborn, inspired cause- to try and gather voices of resistance from across the globe into a chorus of artists that could change the world.
I was left with pages and pages of my original works staring at me, daring me to do more. I imagined them speaking. But I no longer had the hunger inside or the need to know what lay beneath those markings, or even care. For it seemed to me that once again, injustice had won and truth had taken a back seat. And while the rest of that day felt hollow, in the night’s haunted hours what slowly rose inside me was a restlessness, the need to resist. I woke up to a reborn, inspired cause- to try and gather voices of resistance from across the globe into a chorus of artists that could change the world.