Our History was Never Beautiful

One of forty five images in the series “Our History was Never Beautiful” each a modified the portrait of the past and current presidents of the United States. I scour the internet to composite imagery, text and contemporary media, such as Google Street views and node-based image restructuring software, connected to the historical background, political issues, and ideologies intersecting the lives of these individuals. The act of compressing contemporary technologies with historical painted portraiture represents our collapsed notions of time and our cognitive dissonance when considering national politics. Our perceptions of the past are often flawed, calcified through the sediment of years. Eventually, these forty five portraits, each printed on canvas and mounted to a floating black frame, will be hung salon style on the exterior of a fabricated black pentagon structure with a video installation presented in the interior.