Dictator's Newsreel or Bruise (Installation views at the XXX Sao Paulo Biennale)
270 microwave motors, 270 prints on foam cardboard
36 x 9 x 2 ft.
2012
‘’Dictator’s newsreel or bruise’’ is a wall installation composed of 270 different photographic portraits of dictators that I obtained from newspaper archives. The portraits are printed on pan tones that match the skin tones found in a bruise, so the images resemble tattoos on injured skin.
Each portrait is printed on a rectangle that matches the shape of the original newspaper article from which the image was taken. The rectangles are attached to a motor-driven axle that spins slowly , at variable distances from the wall, causing faces to overlap. The viewer of ‘’Dictator’s newsreel or bruise’’ confronts a history of authoritarianism and repression in the past 100 years.