Concerning Fear and Terrorism; The New Bogeyman

My current work focuses on the manipulation of fears and desires by mass media and popular culture. The work is part autobiographical and part social commentary. Through the process of drawing and painting, I am able to look back at various points of my life and re-examine what my basic fears and desires were, and how those emotions were fed by the media sources I consumed. The bogeyman of my youth was communism and I was reminded each and every day that at any moment the red scourge of a Soviet nuclear missile could come screaming down from the sky and wipe out everything. This fear was reinforced by emergency drills conducted at school where alarms were sounded and we filed out of our classrooms in an orderly fashion into the dark basement hallways and proceeded to kneel down and duck our heads between our legs and beneath our hands. I remember thinking that this procedure was completely pointless and I began realizing that this sort of action was only initiated to maintain an illusion of security and safety.

The same feelings arise whenever I travel. It baffles me that I am expected to remove my shoes and belt before I pass through security check points. Yet again I find myself questioning the procedure as I am filing down a corridor in an orderly fashion passing through scanners and metal detectors, only for them to inform me that I cannot bring a bottle of water or a tube of toothpaste because they pose a security rise. There is a new bogeyman in town and his name is Terrorism.

Every day we are bombarded by images of masked men bearing AK 47s and parades of suicide bombers donning their explosive vests in the war torn streets of Iraq and Gaza. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri flash across television screens just like Emmanuel Goldstein poised to elicit our two minutes of hate. These images are often frightening, and combined with ten second soundbites and infinite loops, the result is streamlined propaganda of a fear machine.

I engage in this work not only to draw into question the basis of this fear, but also to regain some sense of control over this emotion. There are truly dangerous people at work in the world, and I am not attempting to deny that. However, fear is often capitalized upon and the people we should really be afraid of are rarely the ones depicted in the headlines.

This series of work is just beginning to develop and I am excited to watch it take shape. Usually I do not show my work in such an early stage of development, but I am choosing to open up my creative process a little bit just to see what kind of feedback emerges. There will be more updates in the coming weeks, so continue to check back and feel free to comment. Until next time, thanks for taking a glimpse into my studio.