Rec-elections (Don’t say you don’t remember.)
2019
site-specific vinyl text installation,
poster, silk-screened tote bags
Installation view, The New School, NY, NY
Curators: Anna Harsanyi & Macushla Robinson. A project commissioned for the exhibition In The Historical Present at the The New School, NY, NY.
The slogan “Don’t say you don’t remember.” derives from George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign poster which incorporated an infamous photograph of a distraught woman kneeling by the body of a slain student at the Kent State massacre. In The New School Archives I came across a stylized version of the same Kent State image on the cover of the catalogue for the 1970 student exhibition My God! We’re Losing a Great Country staged by Parsons students responding to the Kent State shootings.
While they are historically specific, both slogans have a renewed resonance today, specifically in the face of state sanctioned prejudice and violence.The commissioned project consisted of site-specific vinyl text installation, and take-away materials including a free poster in the gallery, and a tote bag featuring the slogan “Don’t say you don’t remember.” available in The New School Store.
Rec-elections is an ongoing project (2012-) which unpacks and critiques the weaponization of nostalgia and slogans used within historical American presidential campaign posters. The etymology of the word slogan derives from Gaelic origins and effectively means “battle cry”. Sourced from online auction sites such as eBay, I alter and reimagine, these presidential campaign posters, banners, and flags and reinsert them back into the public realm where they are utilized in, site-specific interventions and performances, prints, flags and installations.
Within this framework, works from the Rec-elections project resurrect the language of bygone slogans to reveal the fallacy of a romanticized American myth of equality, justice, and prosperity for all.