LOOKING GOOD, FEELING GORGEOUS
The series takes its name from the title of one of the main paintings, Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous and is an overt reference or tongue in cheek rendition of your typical Western family life, education and upbringing where central values, religiosity, morality, esthetic, economic and ideological ideals are juxtaposed against the political and psychological trauma and reality that is covert. The paintings draw on themes such as gun ownership, drug dealing, mental illness, obesity, as well as other urban dystopias. The titles in a way are self explanatory, and are meant to tie up what seems at first to be a loose set of family photos but on closer inspection delve into the darker side of the TV/media oriented world in which modern myths are made of or reconstituted.
For example 21 Hours to Houston comprises of two Palestinian soldiers in the background with a typical American 'nuclear family' of a mother and son, and deals with the way violence breeds violence. The title emphasises how things are interrelated, how political decisions made on one side of the world have violent repercussions on other parts of the world. It also deals with the disproportionate acceptance of gun ownership in America and the global culture of violence and war-mongering interlaced with religious and ethical fundamentalism that are the bread and butter of your average Western lifestyle (which ironically many people aspire to). Like other works this painting also has visual echoes of sacred family imagery and iconography highlighting a discomforting contradiction.
In Holy Family! (Come to Mama) at first glance this painting once again borrows from sacred family iconography - however rather than using idealised figures, characters are used from extreme real life situations; the mother is inspired by inhabitants of a trailer park, the model for the father figure is an injured hockey player and the central issue of the painting is heavily inspired by the Jesus figure which is actually based on a photo of a Guatemalan boy - an illegal immigrant that made it across the Mexican border and now scrapes a living as a street entertainer. The idea of the Jesus figure holding an apple (symbolic of salvation or sin) as a Guatemalan working in Mexico deals with the issue of refugees working in extreme conditions in other countries.
