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Artist Chris Jordan has used small tangible items to construct visual representations of everyday aspects of our American lives. He calls it "An American Self Portrait".
It renders stuff that is impossibly difficult to calculate in our heads (the number of dollars for one hour of war, the thousands of children with no health care as well as the thousands of breast implansts in this great land). It’s weirdly beautiful, and totally overwhelming.
For example, the very idea that 32,000 women purchase potentially harmful, definitely painful, breast augmentation EVERY month while something like 9 million children survive without basic health insurance is obscene. Seriously, where are our priorities?! Have we forgotten, against all evolutionary sense, that breasts are for nurturing life, that they are living tissue not decor to be remodeled (whilst using resources that could go to needy children?
Then there are the photo collages of aluminum cans used per second or paper bags and airplane cups…I’d say about a third to a half of the time I go out, I remember to bring my reusable canvas grocery bags or bring tupperware for take out. I am a fanatical recycler who will carry recyclables on my person until I find the proper receptacle. But gazing at the endless, slinky lines of disposable cups in his photos, I get the sinking feeling that this ship has already been sunk in excess.
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php
One of my interns sent the news article discussing how the United States now incarcerates about 1 out of every 100 people here, the highest ratio in the world (and we’re the "land of the free"??). Goodness we have enough people in the clink to create another small country. Hmm. Sorry, Australia is already taken…
Anyways, the Chris Jordan prison uniform piece is illustrative of this.
Ah art, not just to be aesthetically pleasing (although these works are that), but to make you feel, help one think…
http://www.chrisjordan.com/
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