American Spirit

AMERICAN SPIRIT is a bold and unflinching portrait of the United States — not as it imagines itself, but as it is experienced, interpreted, and projected both within and beyond its borders. Comprising 50 screenprinted stars on paper — one for each state — this series interrogates the symbols through which the nation defines its ideals, its icons, and its mythologies.

At first glance, the stars echo two of America’s most iconic visual emblems: the flag and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Referencing the fifty stars that unite the states of America, each print reclaims the familiar geometry of the star not as a symbol of unity or freedom, but as a lens through which to examine the raw, contested essence of the American project. Each star bears the name of a controversial figure — from politicians and cult leaders to celebrities and criminals — whose stories complicate the packaged narrative of national identity. These names are not anomalies. They are embodiments of the very forces — ambition, power, spectacle, violence — that have shaped America’s rise and its reach.

The series functions as a critique of the American Dream — and a meditation on its cost. In this vision, success is redefined as notoriety, morality is negotiable, and visibility becomes virtue. The figures emblazoned on these stars are not simply infamous; they are products of a culture that rewards audacity, spectacle, and myth-making “by any means necessary.” The dream is real — but so are its shadows.

Here, the work moves beyond national critique to address America’s global image — and its export of culture, ideology, and power. Like its consumer products and media empires, the American Dream travels. But so do its contradictions. Each star, stark in its simplicity, becomes a unit of cultural imperialism repurposed as self-examination — an emblem of how the U.S. packages identity, moral authority, and fame for both domestic consumption and international projection.

The title American Spirit is a carefully calibrated double entendre: it conjures patriotic fervour and commodified identity in equal measure. Echoing the name of a cigarette brand, it evokes addiction and consumption — the slow-burning promise of greatness wrapped in seduction, control, and denial.

Visually minimalist and conceptually rigorous, the series draws on traditions of text-based conceptual art, political pop, and cultural commentary. The collaboration with Joel Izak Smith introduces a sharp formal clarity to each screenprint, allowing the work to function as both document and provocation as each piece distills a dense array of references into a single, haunting image. These stars do not shine. They mark.

Rather than portray a fractured or broken nation, AMERICAN SPIRIT suggests that these contradictions are not failures of the American story — they are its core narrative. The series asks not just who we celebrate or condemn, but what those choices reveal about what America truly values, what it forgives, and what it perpetuates.

This is not a lament for lost unity. It is a mirror held up to a country built on contradiction — where liberty and domination, celebrity and infamy, aspiration and exploitation walk hand in hand. AMERICAN SPIRIT is not about dissonance. It is about truth, as seen through the myths we refuse to give up.