POPPYPhoto Series
20236 Artworks

POPPY (2023-2025) is provoked by wars; how war fundamentally changes perception of the regions and their populations that fall under the banner of war zones as well as the people who engage in those wars—the veterans—and the consequences of their engagement.

Certain places have come to be associated with war, places like “Nam”, a word that conjures decades of suffering rather than the millennia of Vietnamese culture. It is the same for Iraq (often pronounced Eye-Rack) and thus referencing a political era, a marker of change, the flip of a switch in the moment when a country is no longer what it was, and becomes just another war…

Similarly, when people speak of Yemen, they have divorced the name from any form of culture, replacing images of life with those of war. If you google “Syria”, for another example, you will see images of victims, a panatone of desert hues, monotone beiges, bodies, guns, flags, women covered in niqab or hijab, tears, devastation. If you were instead to type in the words “Syria culture”, an explosion of color fills the screen: glorious food, celebratory dances, vivid landscapes. You might redefine search terms for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine, and for Yemen, with similar results.

There is a moment when history stops in its tracks; when countries cease to exist as cultures, and become indexes of war. All richness is obliterated, and only death remains.

The artist draws parallel between this devastation and the people involved in the war. From a North American perspective, the first veteran-victims were those who fought in Vietnam. Most enlisted soldiers are people of color or from underprivileged backgrounds who are unable to access education or well-paying jobs, so they enlist and are sent into training, proud to take up arms to spread democracy.

One of the images, Posing in Pop, captures the optimistic soldier. They have their portraits taken and are assigned a number that defines who they are, and then they are sent off to fight. They don’t encounter the culture of their destination. Not only do they contribute to the active erasure of these places, but they also, in a sense, become a part of them. There is a violent erasure that takes place between the intention to bring freedom to others and the return to a life of constraint.

The poppy is a symbol of valor, meant to show respect for the veteran. But when they come back to the United States these vets are often drawn into a woefully inadequate healthcare system. If they are able to find treatment, they are fed opiates to treat lost limbs or other wounds, including the psychological wounds of war. Others fall helplessly of their own accord into addiction: fentanyl or heroin, opiates, the poppy once again.

There is a cyclical nature to this devastation. In Drown in My Eyes of Poppies, the face of the -clude is warped, distorted, so all that is visible is a huge eye of a poppy, perhaps representing the lure of addiction. Stranded in the Sea of Eye-Popping Poppies is intended for display at any angle, which in itself harbors a form of violence: is the subject falling, are they drowning? The images in this series reveal the hypocrisy of the selfless act of enlistment, and the cost of engagement inflicted upon the vulnerable among us. These veterans—meant to be our valiant protectors or ambassadors of peace—eventually become products of war, and when they come back they receive no protection, no care, suffering from PTSD, unhoused, isolated.

Once seen, they now become unseen, tainted by the war in which they participated. They are either the “lucky” ones who got out alive, now living in the streets or in institutions, or they return in coffins, covered by the flag.