Roman Trumpe l'oeil - Round 1

Roman Trumpe-l’Oeil (2017-2023) is a poignant take on what it means to be a subject of an empire, a look at figures who want to dominate us, but will eventually become historical subjects. To create the portraits, I used images of Roman marble busts and digitally merged them with photos of contemporary political leaders. The chimera like nature of the images mimics the unsettling slipperiness of truth in the Trump era. The subject’s quotes are meant to give you clues into their ideology and values and set the series in a point in time. 

As we navigate the second Trump presidency, this series has evolved into a poignant souvenir collection of past appointments, their gravitas and implications now rendered starkly sober in hindsight. The work unravels several layers of illusion—those tied to media, power, and the artistic representation of the portrait—to reveal the complexities and contradictions of this era. Trapped in a half space, the portraits hover between being animated by spirit or in the process of turning back into stone. The unsettled nature of the series suggests that our shared reality is split; each of us has a virtual reality headset on and we each experience a different simulation of reality. We also have a different visceral response from looking at the same thing. Trump is like a Rorschach test — some see a great savior and some see their nemesis. Power is being used to stoke fear and separation, ripping a part of our common humanity into camps. Using dark humor, I present this split in our country’s psyche in my series.