via
Neatorama. Brianna asked for a food-related IotD, and while that's a typical IotD category, another category we wander into is edgy art. That makes this an irresistable "two-fer", and it becomes the image of the day.
The artist in this case is Heidi Hesse, and these images come from her installation "Sugar Coated" from the collection "Exporting Liberty".
Hesse's website gives her artist's statement:
Quote:
"Heidi Hesse was born in Germany, grew up in South Africa and Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1982. Recently, Hesse began to investigate and contemplate the meaning and possibility of U. S. citizenship. She, as many an earnest emigre pursuing the American Dream has done before her, began to read the documents and stories associated with the founding of the United States of America. Through her investigations, Hesse began to identify a significant gap between the rhetoric of liberty embedded in our documents and our practice of ’exporting liberty’ throughout the world.
Exporting Liberty is an examination of citizenship and its attendant responsibility. It is both a celebration of freedom and a critique of excess, an homage to democracy, and a warning that the comfort borne of privilege can breed a dangerous apathy... Welcome to America. Would you like to supersize that?"
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I suppose that's one way to think of it; another way is
Welcome to America, where you can get paid to put gumballs on a Hummer and it turns out to be a critique, not a symbol of excess.
Enh. I'm not really skeptical about this work, I like it. It brings together the colorful sugary joy of childhood with the seriousness of combat. You want to taste it and enjoy it for the gumballs, but by its shape you're reminded of the very adult current events. The dichotomy is terrifying.