Also, this wild collage mashes up media images from Trump’s presidency into a Bosch-like scene. The artist, Chris Santa Maria, has been working on it since 2016.
– Elisa Wouk Almino, senior editor
A Collage of Images from Trump's Presidency
Chris Santa Maria, “PRESIDENT TRUMP” (2016 – 2020), paper collage on canvas, 72 x 72 inches
At eye level, artist Chris Santa Maria’s six-foot-high collage “PRESIDENT TRUMP”, currently on view at Jim Kempner Fine Art, depicts a gargantuan figure hovering above a densely populated landscape.
However, a closer look reveals thousands of individual photographs meticulously cut out from newspapers, magazines and internet print-outs in the last four years. Every element has been culled from the unsettlingly familiar visual torrent of Trump’s presidency.
Proposing an overdue historical corrective, Vida Americana is a reminder that neither the US or European avant-garde maintained a monopoly on Modernism.
While the museum presents its attempt to identify trafficked antiquities as an altruistic enterprise, its policing of the antiquities market also distracts from its historic role in acquiring looted objects.
The Social Public Art Resource Center is inviting the public to send photos of their loved ones to be included in an altar and virtual “Calling of the Spirits” ritual.