Europa in Bildern, 2019
Growing up in the so-called antipodes, as far from Europe as can be, I constructed a fantasy vision of that continent from photographs, films, novels, and from the many other sources of cultural output of European origin. For me Europe was the very source of culture itself. It took me a long time to realise that my fantasy of Europe was the product of an established power relationship between cultural supremacy and the post-colonial cultural cringe. I am still now trying to shake off the ramifications of such an historic interdependence.
This dynamic has also been reinforced by capitalistic structures. Culture, which is more and more linked to tourism and its corresponding industry in the 21st century, has been appropriated by consumer culture. Culture as process has been transformed into culture as product.
We can only digest it if we can consume it.
And it has to be desirable so we can't help but want to consume it.
In this project I take images that show typical, easily-digestible, romanticised views of Europe, the type of images that would have seduced me in the past, and present them as objects. In this way we are more easily able to analyse them as items that contain meanings that compel us to respond in certain ways.
The objects are then rephotographed, returning them to the cycle of image production and transmission that dominates visual culture.