Thinking About Photography

Am I Am A Mutant

Am I Am a Mutant is an immersive installation consisting of over 200 sun-fused photograms made only from light sensitive paper, marquee letter plates, and sunlight. These unique hybrids of text and imagery became an inescapable monument that symbolizes the inherited generational trauma and my own experience of nuclear tensions of today. The use of marquee letter plates, which are typically deployed to display and inform people of upcoming movies and plays, is not accidental. The divide between reality and fiction is often wide but thin at the same time, especially when it comes to monuments and the past. My superhero-filled childhood is similar to many, my awakening to the horror of such things is more unique, and many still only imagine the spectacle they have seen on the silver screen, not to the elongated tragedy that stretches such events over a long period of time. For these viewers, nuclear weapons and power only exist in the form of a brief mushroom, a flash, and a powerful period of fire and destruction. Then, they leave the theater, their eyes leaving the screen. The damage only exists for how long they can witness the explosion and not the effects it has on the survivors’ genes and the invisible radiation seeping into the very earth.

*Most of the works are “written” vertically, echoing the layout of the Japanese language and demanding more time to read and decipher them for those unaccustomed to the structure.