Collage
Cutting and pasting rewrites history.
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West Was Won
Can You Tell Me How The West Was Won is a series of collages that looks at the spirit of exploration and the complicated notion of Manifest Destiny. As it was written, it was that pioneering spirit that made America great as a young nation came to be born. But the passive telling of this story masks and belies a complexity that would have serious ramifications throughout the history of our country up until today.
By juxtaposing portraits of unknown “cowboys” from the American West over top of portraits of the Apollo Astronauts, I am essentially obscuring their identities, in order to shift focus from personality to the larger, general effects of exploration, imperialism and expansion.
I am seeking to create a conversation driven by viewers in response to these collages and the play between the formal anomalies of each found photo as they become exploited to create an altogether new visual experience.
Collage is an integral part of my process and I work on ones that relate to the concerns in my paintings.
Capturing the Void
Nisus Gallery
Portland OR
2013
“Advertising and Life and the people who were making magazines and the people who were funding these magazines made images from what they knew, not taking into consideration the lives of Mexican people or Black people or women.
They regurgitate this image, and that’s one of the reasons why I love using that and why I don’t feel badly that all the images are all men. If I can sort of rectify that with a little bit of color or a little bit of cutting.
I’m not trying to press an agenda, but they are really political. I am literally reconfiguring history. I’m changing the image of a very important time period in America.”
—Erik Parra
Artslant Team
”Jolene Torre: Talking With Erik Parra”