10 COMMANDMENTS
The narrative seeks to examine the socio-political makeup of America
through its political icons - the presidential figures that mark the
most notable and controversial chapters in American history. Each
tableau features a President portrayed through the prism of their
politics, popularity and/or notoriety, further contextualized by a
contemporary backdrop, and assigned one of the moral and ethical postulates of the Ten Commandments.
Its grounding piece, Lincoln, depicts the 16th and most popular President in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. His towering figure barely fits in the otherwise empty school corridor littered with children's clothes, glass shards, bullet shells and blood stains. Yet the sense of mourning and loss emanating from the scene renders him small and defeated. By extension, the imagery renders small the constitutional principles on which The United States were founded. Coupled with the 6th Commandment "Thou shalt not kill", the piece evokes the President's own public assassination and further underlines the country's ongoing issues of gun violence and gun policy.
The second amendment to the constitution allows access to guns in America and has placed weapons into the hands of the disgruntled and mentally ill. Children and innocents are regularly targeted in mass shootings such as the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 Lincoln led the Union into the Civil War to preserve the nation and end slavery. He was assassinated just five days after the Confederate armies surrendered.