Rec-elections (“The Issue Is Privilege”)
2018
site-specific vinyl text installation
68.5 x 732 inches
Installation view, Westchester Community College, Valhalla, NY
Rec-elections (“The Issue Is Privilege”) is a reimaginging of 1976 Democratic Presidential candidate Fred Harris’ campaign slogan on a community college campus.
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.