The cycle of history dictates that where an empire rises, eventually it shall fall. These predictions are inherently troubling, for they create a tension that inspires a sort of Chicken Little mentality – a belief that any time of trouble is the apocalyptic herald of a collapse and restructuring in hegemonic forces. While not always universally disconcerting, it is certainly an unsettling realization for those who have benefited from the general prosperity of being a resident of a nation in power. Empire Falls, featuring works by Nancy Baker and Oriane Stender, examines the frailty and fragility of the current economic climate in United States politics.
Stender's money quilts and collaged dollars raise questions about the relationship of art to money. By employing currency, Stender automatically forces a rarified status onto her works, a status that she contrasts against her typically “craft” methods of production like stitch work and weaving.
Drawing upon the traditions and techniques of women’s handicrafts as well as the conceptual concerns of contemporary art, her highly detailed quilts and weavings made of dollar bills combine the thrifty ethic of reuse with the dadaesque negation (and subsequent transformation) of the global culture’s most sacred object. The dollar is loaded with associations, both communal and personal. The work brings up issues of value, labor and meaning. Does time = money? Does money = value? As the value of the dollar decreases, does the value of what we create also decrease? Are we only as strong as our currency?
Included in Stender’s exhibit will be a floor installation, “Fallen Quilt.” The quilt is made up of thousands of images of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The New York Times printed the pictures of the dead as the death toll reached 1,000, then 2,000, then 3,000... The pages of tiny faces, captioned only with name, age and hometown, reflected the vastness of the tragedy of war. Stender felt moved to somehow mark and commemorate the death toll using only the flimsy, ephemeral material that the pictures were printed on. From a distance, the small pieces form an aesthetically pleasing quilt or decorative mosaic, but as one looks closer, the components come into focus. Each piece, like each dead soldier, is linked in a grand pattern. But each is also vulnerable, easily blown away, stepped on, discarded. This piece will never be finished.
Baker's large scale cardboard block installation universalizes some of the greater woes of the economy by pointedly critiquing its stability. It would be difficult for her to more clearly cite recent economic debacles such as the deflated housing boom, save perhaps precariously resting a cracked, anthropomorphized egg on its ledge.
When all is taken together with Stender’s dead soldier project and Baker’s mixed media pieces lampooning corporate policies, however, a viewer realizes that the artists portray a truth that more is at stake than the so-called empire of capitalist ideology. Real people are suffering the very tangible consequences of a nation struggling to walk a tightrope between domestic and foreign challenges, and missteps in either sphere can strain an already tested United States. Baker responds to these hardships by evoking and summarily glossing over woes with the forced casualness of a grim stockholders’ report, charming viewers to LetGo amid flowers and glitter.
Of course, notions of the patterns of empire predate a globalized market. When the almighty dollar – or, alternatively, Euro, pound, yen, etc. – transcends national boundaries, the effects that a single economy feels rarely exist in a vacuum. Baker’s works on paper remind the viewers that her parodied logos stem from symbols which are instantly recognized and consumed both within and without the United States. Empire Falls explores the fact that in a globalized market where commerce can easily overpower politics, a political empire cannot suffer and collapse independent of its competitors.
