Launched in April of 2017, Turf War was my thesis costume collection and live performance culminating my study at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Artist Statement:
Turf War is a performative journey into the hazy fever dream that lies just beyond your neighbor's picket fence. Suburbia is often sold to us as a pristine and ideal place to raise a middle-class American family, but reality shreds this image with rampant consumerism, twisted relationships, and escapist tendencies. Suburbanites' unhealthy obsession with perfectionism and competition keep this lie covered up with a bright red bow, and so the cycle marches on. With an emphasis on the prefix to sub-urban, Turf War is a harsh surrealist look at two competitive families' un-neighborly war, with their preface of perfectionism removed by the artist. These twin families of four, each with a monstrous pet they call their own, may realize they have more in common than meets the eye when an out-of-towner disrupts their chilly face-off. American iconography, various sports gear, and meaningful text reveal that differing beliefs of ownership, religion, and human worth were the catalyst to this war. Turf War will make you look twice - where beloved pets were, animal captives now roam, and you may find there's a reason why everyone's grass is plastic.
