and you were there, too... 2024

Opaque white screenprints on correx board; flashlights.

Dimensions Vary

This work is set in a dark space, offering an air of mystery. At first, the prints look to be blank pieces of plastic hanging from the ceiling. The viewers are provided with flashlights, but not with instructions. 

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By shining the lights behind the prints, the viewers reveal detailed archival images from New York in the 1980s. This was an era of optimism -- right at the end of the cold war, right at the beginning of American hegemony. For a moment, history was over. 

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I did not know this time: a New York before 9/11, Wall Street before the 2008 financial crisis, but I feel as though I have a memory of it through the media I have consumed. This project is an exposition of that false -- "prosthetic" -- memory. Through the materials and processes I use, (the screenprints of pop-art, the correx board of political advertisement) I evoke a different era; through the action I ask for from the viewers, (active discovery and interaction) I attempt to leave them with a similarly ghostly, uncanny memory as my own.