Faciès, the reduction, and abstraction of the face and its features to an object void of ethic origin, earthen, manipulated to create variation in composition, color, and effective expression. Composed of two expressions: the calm and the critic, rendered in silica and gypsum, this exhibition is rooted in challenging how we experience and mitigate our reflex to categorize and judge.

The colonial study of facial features as a means to identify one group from another has advanced our still limited understanding of evolution. In an attempt to understand what caused the formation of broad noses, thick lips, epicanthic folds, western Europe devised systems of difference to validate the discrimination and dehumanization of indigenous peoples across the globe.

To this day, these systems of judgement, and I want to insist that these are systems of judgement and not value, have an indelible hold on our society. Judgement is evolutionary; safe to eat or not safe to eat, dangerous animal or gentle animal, friend or foe. Over the course of history institutions and cultural machines have been designed to judge, categorize, and sort human beings. However, these systems operate based on a form of judgement no longer rooted in survival but greed and bigotry.

The future, of man, of the planet earth, depends on abolition and the establishment of systems rooted in selflessness, openness, and acceptance, the ability to not fully understand and yet be capable of respect. Release “the way things were,” change is the only constant, be open to it.