The test of our exceptionalism is at hand.

Artist Statement

Every citizen carries a version of the history of their country in their
heart and their head. This look at American exceptionalism consists
of a mash-up of images and texts, historical and personal, that casts
a baleful but ultimately hopeful eye on the experiment in democracy
and self-government that was once widely held to be a beacon for
the world.  Behind that beacon’s glare were the illusions and
contradictions of self-directed people struggling and preening in our
laboratory of democracy and loot. Our original sins and virtues
have set tenacious templates.

American exceptionalism is partly a matter of scale and lucky timing:
space and resources enabled us to accumulate on a vast field and
with an unprecedented snowballing technological sophistication.
Oceans protected us. We are proud of our achievements and heroism.
We are in denial -or worse, defensive- about our hellacious villainies.

Waves of immigrants have provided intellect, muscle and
ambition, jostling and competing with each other to provide a series
of dynamic counter-balances in our economy and our polity.
Unprecedented challenges of recrudescent racism, toxic nationalism,
political alienation, economic disparity, technological dislocations and
looming climate maelstroms have cracked open deep and basic
fault lines.

We are presently a country on one hand embracing the complexity of
expanding knowledge and freedoms, and on the other in a bumptious,
often virulent full scale retreat from that complexity.  The economic
and political actors who foment and leverage that reaction for their
own benefit have for the moment carried the day.  Sparse bread,
taunting holograms of dominance and plenty.

The test of our exceptionalism is at hand.

Joe Phelan                                                                                                                                          August,  2017