“State of The Union, Things Fall Apart, Can the Center Still Hold” The Phillips Collection

“STATE OF THE UNION, Can the Center Still Hold”. c.2021 Commissioned by The Phillips Collection to commemorate the museums centenary celebration. “In this space, I want to welcome visitors to a sense of a spiritual sacred space through an immersive experience. Through my ‘script’ drawings, the distincti on between writing and visual art, legibility and illegibility are dissolved, allowing the abstraction rooted in ancestral knowledge and indigenous power symbols to build intuitive meaning. In recent times, this nation, this proud beacon of democracy has been upended by social and political chaos. In a deeply divided nation, what certainty are the declarations of Presidents that ‘the State of the Union is strong’? Are we tethering at the cliff in W.B. Yeats apocalyptic poem? Things have fallen apart; can the center can still hold? Is this the beginning of the end of the empire? “ - Victor Ekpuk

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