I just finished submitting for an exhibition called Evolving Freedoms at Saint Joseph’s University’s Art Museum in Philadelphia. the opportunity landed in my inbox at an interesting moment...

The United States is coming up on its 250th anniversary, and it feels like everything is vibrating: political turmoil, confusion, chaos, noise. At the same time, our day-to-day lives are weirdly comfortable. You can order many things from amazon with free overnight delivery. You can eat octopus from japan on a random Tuesday. or a suit from egypt in thibodeaux, louisiana. It’s all normal now, and almost obvious, but to me, it feels deeply strange.

many of the shows I’ve been curated into lately orbit similar themes. One is called In Search of History. Another is In-security. These seem to be the questions institutions want artists thinking about right now — and making work about — Which makes sense.

The art world, like everything else, has a political tilt. a political expectation, really: that you’ll shout from the rooftops, that your politics will be legible, that you’ll pick a side (the correct side) and perform it loudly enough to prove your allegiance… or else…

well, I don’t want my images to feel like ready-made statements or social booby traps... I’m interested in making work that comes from a more transcendent place — one that politics can absolutely touch, but don’t fully define.

don’t get me wrong… Politics absolutely affects people’s lives. and sometimes, quite profoundly. Other times, not at all. But there’s another layer of experience underneath all of that: the human experience, the animal experience, consciousness itself. The place where dreams come from. The place where nightmares come from. The place we daydream, dissociate, remember, forget.

That’s the register I’m trying to reach toward as an ideal — while still acknowledging that the work exists inside a cultural context. It would be impossible for it not to. It would be impossible for me not to react and respond to the world I live in, especially as someone making things about that world. Both things are true at once.

This tension shows up most clearly when I’m writing artist statements. Every application wants one. “Tell us how smart you are. Tell us how your work is changing the world.” I think about this constantly. I’ll write something that feels right, then read it again weeks or months later and start questioning it — not because I disagree with myself, but because I can feel myself leaking through the seams. Why did I word it that way? Why did I frame it like that?

I’m still the same person. I wake up inside the same body, looking out through the same eyes. But every day is new. Consciousness is always arriving. o’ consciousness, and the constant newness of time. People say “be here now,” “this is it”, and whatever other alan watts quote you want to pull from the shelf. and it’s corny, but it’s also kind of unavoidable. The work I’m making is chasing that condition — while still bumping up against institutions, language, expectations, and applications that demand coherence and certainty.

On my walk today, I kept circling back to this idea of American identity — whatever that even means right now. I feel deeply American. Not in a flag-waving way, but in a visceral, inherited way. I’m a fourteenth-generation American. My ancestor Joshua hewes crossed the atlantic in 1630.

another of my relatives, though not a direct descendant, Joseph hewes, signed the Declaration of Independence. Another, George hewes — nicknamed “twelves,” (yes, plural, for reasons I don’t actually know) was a privateer during the Revolutionary era. According to the stories, he was involved in the Boston Tea Party. Supposedly he was the one who demanded the keys from the British officer guarding the tea. I wasn’t there, obviously, but that’s the story. i read it on his wikipedia page, so it’s gotta be true.

He once tarred and feathered a British officer. The officer survived — apparently non-lethal, but brutal. The officer came back later with his homies, captured twelves, and tarred and feathered him in return. well, twelves survived his own bout with the hot goo, gathered up his boys, and went back and got the british officer a second time. fuck yeah. I don’t know what to make of that except that it feels… instructive. Violent, absurd, stubborn, cyclical. Very American. very mosh pit. very me.

I believe in free speech. I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in freedom of assembly and protest. At the same time, in recent years of protest-meets-riot, I’ve felt a growing sense of (*ahem*, appetite for?) chaos. On one hand, it’s recognizably American: rebellion against tyranny. On the other hand, at this frequency, it starts to feel like a failed state… a civil war in the making. It doesn’t feel like the comfortable, 1990’s, taco bell, gulf war, suburban-driving, strip-mall America I grew up in… and, I guess… quietly assumed would continue forever.

I don’t know why I assumed that.

George Robert 'Twelves' Hewes

Joseph Hewes

I’ve had family in the military. Uncles. Cousins. Ancestors. I chose a different path, but it’s not abstract to me.

isn’t that what politics is arguing about? whether or not you should join the military?

my wife is Turkish. I’ve lived in Turkey. they have a military.

I’ve seen real political repression, both at home and abroad. I’ve navigated migration systems that are expensive, arbitrary, often degrading, and always frustrating. I’ve been denied residency permits in countries you couldn’t point to on a map. I’ve been pulled aside for “random” searches. i haven’t gotten cavity searched yet, but hey, the night’s still young…

That’s just how borders and bureaucrats work.

You can say you want a borderless world until you’re red white and blue in the face, but we still have to live in the world that we have. the one with borders. my grandpa used to say “want in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.” Some laws make sense. Some don’t. a society where laws aren’t enforced is no society at all.

The American two-party system operates like a pendulum. lately, it feels like it’s swinging with increasing amplitude — swinging further and further each cycle. nowadays, I think of myself as a centrist, or maybe just a realist. I take issues one at a time. I’m sure some people would call me a fascist, Others would call me a socialist. I don’t really care what people call me. Labels feel useless at this point.

I try to avoid political conversations when I can.

being right doesn’t win you any arguments… especially nowadays.

more and more, it feels like time is accelerating. Innovation, communication, culture — it all moves exponentially, per Terrance mckenna’s novelty theory. the fractal expansion (or dissolution, depending on your frame of reference) into more and more novel situations, which self-propagate and spread at a rapidly increasing rate. there’s a brick on the gas pedal, and nobody’s at the wheel.

I don’t know the lifespan of a constitution… People act like they’ve cracked the code… that their team has solved governance forever.

How does a legal system built on parchment paper keep up with a social-media-driven world where situations mutate weekly? or even hourly?

Last time I was in Philadelphia, I meant to visit Joseph hewes’ grave and didn’t make it by. Next time, I will.

maybe i’ll pour out some san pelligrino for him.

I’ve got some business travel booked for february — openings in New York, Pomona, Houston, and beyond. Financially, I’m in the red, and probably will be for a while. But the work feels better. Clearer. More honest. I’m getting better at communicating what I’m actually trying to do — through images, through words, through execution.

That alone feels like progress.

I wonder what twelves would make of all this.

Two hundred and fifty years is a long time.

It’s also just a blip 👉👈.

here, on the wrong side of history

How Much Horsepower Is in a Ponytail?