Status Quo: Consuming Liberty
12” x 24”
Mixed Media on Canvas (Collage, Stucco, Acrylic, Silver Leaf)
Completed April 2022
The passing of Secretary of State Albright had me meditating on her quote "I insist that each of you... be more than a consumer of liberty." I thought about her brilliant analysis of Europe, and the current crisis in Ukraine. This partner piece to Matrilinear (https://www.manjusadarangani.com/post/matrilinear) is a meditation of the hidden textures and costs of the status quo, the delicate untenable nature of the present.
I played with textures to capture the labor and effort of holding up the sky, the role of the tired, overworked, overlooked minority on the front lines.I wanted to challenge my own privilege, my expectation of stability without examining any of the teetering, decaying understructures.
This piece is a call to action. The onset of the pandemic had many of us examining our choices, walking away from unfulfilling careers to recalibrate our priorities. Many of us centered family over fame, friends over frenzied pursuit of success. I believe the current moment forces us to examine our crumbling foundations as a planet. I think this moment is pivotal for us as a collective; it is an opportunity to reexamine our desires, to recalibrate our consumption, to reset our expectations. It is a call to becoming more than consumers of an illusion of stability.
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