Please click on the photos for a better view. The images are amazing, but I'm still debating on the morality of capitalizing on someone else's struggle.
My process is fairly simple. I work very conceptually. I start with a phrase or observation and go from there. In this work a friend and myself noticed the Traveling through Time campaign on Tri-met and started looking at the folks represented in the images. My friend, Rachael Wilson and I went to the Oregon Historical Society to look at their slides to see if we could find alternatives to the Tri-met images showing people of more color. We found 12 images right off. So far I have 26 images and my goal is 36 for a show in 2011.
The biggest part of my process is help from others. My sister Nova Moisa used her crazy Photoshop skills and recreated the Trimet logo. Nova also helped in the printing of the photos because I had never done that before. A friend of mine Jerry Gilmer helped me make the frames for the work and pretty much helps me create anything I need out of wood, metal, fiberglass, resin, pretty much if it exists Jerry can find a way to make it. Friends and family help me in making the concepts strong through long and thorough conversations questioning every part of the work’s message.
I make art because there is something I want to say and it’s often heard best through art.
Traveling through Time - Artist's Statement
How is that we portray history in a way that makes us feel safe and doesn’t open up old misgivings? Usually by leaving out the history of those who were subject to oppression. Of course it’s common place to discuss “a people’s history” that tells the story of those not as victorious and we then demonize the victor for being racist, classist, sexist, etc. It’s easy to do so from our vantage with hindsight bias acting as our liaison between our history and our own stories, in turn making questions of the -isms and -ists seem as if we’ve already covered the topics. We look to the Red States, the rural, the South as our new touchstone for our own oppressive behavior. We need them because without them we only have ourselves as the touchstone for oppression and that’s no fun. Tri Met of course couldn’t present these photos because they have to depict a safe history where we all got along where we all had access. They can do this by not having reminders of how cruel Oregonians were to people of more color. I wish there was a nicer more polite way to way to say it. Tri Met isn’t to blame for not showing minorities in their campaign because not all minorities want the reminder either. From my perspective though, I think it is kind of sad that to feel safe we can’t show folks of more color.
My current Bio
I enjoy looking at how I might be congratulating myself a bit too much. I wonder about my attempts at creating balance for myself where I can be content and then seeing how oppressive and closed that feeling can be. In the end I find the most satisfaction when I can displace myself momentarily and see myself as an oppressor, which is usually followed by seeing myself as a poser. The thing I’m most scared of is groupthink and I know that can make me sometimes pretty intolerable, my apologies in advance.
