Memorials have been a long time point of interest - I came came of age in art school in the 1980’s - I remember vividly the controversies surrounding Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The works I’ve created here are informed by a sense of taking personal agency in regard to memorialization of the dead from the Iraq conflicts to our drone wars and American gun violence - all are informed by the philosophies surrounding what scholar James E. Young termed as “counter monuments”, memorials which critically raise important questions regarding culpability, agency, memory, forgetting and questioning the very meaning of what and who are memorials for? Who is remembered? Who is forgotten? Through these works I hope to engage viewers and participants to actively confront our legacies of violence in the immediate. The works explore methodologies for expanding thinking and practice surrounding the role of the contemporary artist by looking at the context of creative activism in the digital age and the attendant complexities surrounding remembrance and memorialization.

Opposite: “The Atone Project: Remembering the Ahmadis”, excerpt from the book INCITE: Digital Art and Activism, Peacock Studios.