Project details
This installation explores the classic 20th century American middle-class dining room as both a display space and indicative of the aspirational values of bourgeois culture. All of the interior surfaces becomes sites for artistic intervention: hand-painted patterns are digitally produced as textiles, wallpaper border, chair coverings, and table cloth to make light of the relationships between war and labor in American society. Employing kitsch and visual humor, the various pieces in the installation are: The New Grange Pattern, Corn to Condos Wallpaper Border, and Baghdad Blasts Toile Curtain Pattern, among others. Designed after historic patterns and other contemporary examples (such as Thomas Kincaid’s line of wallpaper), the installation becomes a site for reflection on post-9/11 global military engagement, immigration, and factory farming food production.
