TOGETHER WE FIND APATHY

Together We Find Apathy is a series of digital collages which speak to the roll of imagery and the ways they privy to appropriation, misappropriation, neglect, shame, and so on. For the collages, words like ‘war,’ ‘naked,’ and ‘lesbian,’ were searched for within open source image banks, as well as certain prominent hashtags, #blacklivesmatter, #liveauthentic, #yesallwomen. The images within each collage span generations; from bra burning in the 1960’s to mass incarceration in the 1990’s to famine in the 2000’s, yet any one of these issues is as relevant today as it was when the image was taken. The only definable personal image by the artist in each collage is the final work---aptly showing the huge amount of information we have at our disposal, and the simple ways, even through an internet search, that we become witnesses and selective but inactive bystanders through screens, selecting and neglecting as we wish, and leaving the rest to someone else. 

 

As a public, we have seen time-and-again images and words being taken and transformed into something entirely outside of themselves through the viral waves of the internet. Social media activism has led us down a path where it's powerful to post or share from the security of our homes without having to take the risk of placing our body, our mind, our voice on the frontline. We believe we are acting in support of a cause when in reality we are just adding to a persistent noise, a slow burn into complacency. This work was created in 2015, just as the importance of social media was coming to fruition but before a large majority of us recognized what the real impact of it would be. Since 2015, we have seen Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok etc completely redetermine how our lives are defined and how we interact with the world. Together We Find Apathy started out as a reaction to the changing platforms and has since evolved more into a hope that we remember our history.