Bitter Harvest is a new installation at Cosign Projects in St. Louis, Missouri, March 28 – May 11, 2010.
The three flags on display for Cosign Projects appropriates images published in popular media over the past several years, reinscribing this disturbing narrative. The result is a series of textile paintings overwhelmed by poppy flowers and human figures. The pattern evident in the flags, inspired by traditional wallpaper and ornament design, visually seduces the viewer while simultaneously assaulting them with hallucinatory images of poppy cultivation and its relationship to the international drug trade, the American military incursion in Afghanistan, and the cycle of economic underdevelopment in rural farm areas of the Golden Crescent.
To read a statement concerning the project and its relationship to my extra-artistic curatorial practice, click here.]]>