Goodnight America
The United States of America is a young nation—one whose legacy has burned fast and bright and whose once vast and inescapable empire has long since fallen. Gone are the days of cowboys and exploration. There is no more excitement to be suddenly uncovered from America, for America has been traversed and stripped of its resources. The wars America sustains in the Middle East only hold fragments of what America used to represent. We’re told that America is waging wars in the name of freedom—that these wars are a just and honorable cause. Yet these wars, like much else in America, are only attempts at recreating the conditions which allowed for America to become a global superpower.
While America focuses on external conflicts, the average person in America is left forgotten. Proof of their existence resides only in the traces of civilization they imprint upon the land. Their abandoned houses and barns litter farmlands, whose previous owners decided that vacating them with their belongings inside was more survivable than waiting out whatever issues afflicted them. The new landowners decided that tearing these buildings down was more work than just planting crops around them. What’s left is an inhospitable land with only discarded traces of its forgotten former glory. We have robbed American soil of its mystery and brilliance in a search for efficiency and above all, profit. When cities are filled with empty buildings, and streets are filled with litter, how are we meant to remember America?
In March of 2025, I drove deep into the countryside of eastern Washington in search of the forgotten America. One building in particular stands out: a two story house with boarded up windows that had been converted to a school. Inside were piles of children's clothing, calendars from the late 1940s, and rows upon rows of beds. Amidst these piles, I found photographs of soldiers returning home. The conquest West in America expanded beyond the continent and into Southeast Asia. Americans were sent to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam to extract more profit from Asian land but also to rediscover the mysteries that exploration can reveal. I wonder, was America past its prime even then? Yet just like the current American conflicts in the Middle East, these conflicts served no real goal other than the preservation of an image of America.
“Kirsten” and “Pups Is 12 Days Old” are paintings made in the image of photographs taken from a past life of America. These works echo the desperation of America to stay empowered even as it coasts towards irrelevancy. And much like America, these paintings and photographs do not tell the full story. Their fragmentation distorts reality by forcing us to create narratives from incomplete information. With these images, we are made to reflect upon America, and we find not an idealized world but instead a dystopian one—home to racism, classism, and violence. The greatness America feels it deserves, is a manufactured facade that lives only to assert its own greatness.
