STATEMENT FROM THE ARTIST
The artwork is about resistance.
The people in these paintings contributed to our history and our country’s well-being. They served, they led, they showed up. But because they didn’t fit the mold of what the administration believed should be represented, they were cut. That’s what DEI was created to address: the erasure of people who weren’t traditionally centered. So they were simply removed from public record. Because they didn’t match the image of who deserves to be seen, they didn’t count.
I spent months digging through digital archives and government caches to find them again. Most of the original pages were gone. I used the Wayback Machine, Photoshop, AI tools, and forensic-level research to reconstruct and reformat each image.
Then came the physical process, transferring each portrait onto canvas through a technique I developed, scrubbing away layers of paper to reveal what they tried to hide. Each person is preserved on canvas and again on my website, where a QR code next to the painting leads to their names and any other information I could uncover. This project doesn’t just show what was lost. It holds the people who were supposed to disappear. It confronts the administration’s actions and insists on accountability. This is documentation of what was done and a commitment to remember, so it can’t be done again.
