Your Capitalism Is Fucking Killing Us

Out of a collaboration between myself and sociologist Jasmin Hirstov (read more here) I was given permission by the FNLS (Frente Nacional de Lucha por el Socialismo) to use public images of members of their community who had been disappeared. It is an important distinction to make about the images being in the public domain and yet seeking permission on my part. If I were not able to work with Jasmine and therefore be trusted by the FNLS to produce artwork about them in a manner that is both respectful and in alignment with their core values, then I would simply be another person in a long line of people who are exploiting the Indigenous people of Mexico. It is a tremendous honor to have their blessing, and an essential element in me being able to make this work from a morally justifiable position, and I have this collaboration and Jasmin in particular to thank for that.

I settled on an idea for a series of six hand-embroidered portraits of people who have been "disappeared", and put those images into an AI imaging tool to transform them into a scream, so that the person would appear to be screaming instead of as they originally are with closed mouths. I wanted to give them a chance to "come back to life" through the work and scream at the world. The title is a vulgar and brutal, and that is intentional, because this was my greatest take-away from this experience of meeting with the FNLS, which is that they have been and continue to be brutalized in the most horrible of ways, and yet most, if not all, of the world is deaf. We, in the global north, are not hearing them; we are not hearing their suffering, and we are causing it, our ways, our consumption, our endless fascination with capital and wealth, and this makes us fundamentally complicit. As always, I want my work to generate a strong emotional response, and in this instance I want that emotional response to be a mix of horror, concern, fear and also shame (on us in the global north).

Your Capitalism Is Fucking Killing Us 1 (Gregorio de la Cruz de la Cruz tortured and murdered on July 23, 2023), embroidery-thread, lottery tickets, various fabrics, buttons, metal loops, wire, sewing thread, acrylic paint, color pencil & markers, tear-away stabilizer on plastic tarp with additional grommets. 33 x 26 in., 2026.

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