Citizen
Citizen is a timeline of people's rights in America starting with the Declaration of Independence. The imagery of people holding up children demonstrates humanity’s ability to make things better for future generations. Most of the text laser cut throughout each painting endorses and upholds this concept with concrete laws, official declarations and speeches expressing egalitarian ideas supporting positive social agreements. Others reveal inequities. The first images are of white people to recognize the fact that America was founded on the idea that “God created all white men equal”. The acknowledgment of different races and genders deserving any rights and/or freedoms appears only later in the constitution and in the establishment of various laws as American society has evolved. The final two paintings in this gallery deal with the Equal Rights Amendment and are not included in the historical timeline because the ERA is still not an official amendment.
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