What’s most unsettling about art’s demonstrations of power is how beautiful they can be. Flowers, symmetries, boldly resonant sound - such things smooth over what power actually does.
They dress the harm in a pleasing guise, make it broadly acceptable, and easy to take in and to consume.
The “little bite” we swallow is the permission slip for what comes later: a quiet start to the normalization of disregard.
Beauty is so tempting - so enchanting, so lullying. In this work I play on camouflage’s double meaning: hiding in plain sight, even in the midst of conflict.
Detail photographs of Mark Anton Group (1899) by Arthur Strasser beside the Vienna Secession
(2024–2025)