Posters P1 - P5 are a series of screenprints that each display a sole politicized symbol taken from an internet meme. Each symbol is ‘depowered’ to a black silhouette and replicated across the surface like a virus replicating before our eyes. The repeated images create a sense of not only the ubiquity of the symbol from a moment in time, but is also meant to simulate how viewers experience these symbols — at first slowly, then steadily through algorithms, and eventually saturated as full-blown propaganda.
The symbols in these five works have been used repeatedly in memes as propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, inciting a type of psychological warfare to incite emotion or anger to sway opinion or rally a call to action. For example, in P1 we see a Ukrainian woman holding a flag that was quickly appropriated by the Kremlin and used as a way to misinform the Russian people that the people of Ukraine were welcoming their illegal invasion. Each work in this series also touches on the hostile takeover or appropriation of once innocuous symbols now retooled for nefarious purposes.