Innocence Interrupted

This piece began as a reflection on what it means to belong within a nation that simultaneously promises protection and practices exclusion. It confronts the tension between innocence and the realities of the systems we are raised to trust.

Year: 2026
Medium: Archival pigment print

Purpose Statement:

Through familiar imagery and childlike visual language, this work contrasts early ideas of identity, belonging, and national narrative with the lived realities of power, enforcement, and resistance. Examining the tension between innocence and the systems we are raised within.

This piece began as a reflection on what it means to belong within a nation that simultaneously promises protection and practices exclusion. It confronts the tension between innocence and the realities of the systems we are raised to trust.

By bringing these contradictions into focus, the piece invites viewers to question what is normalized, what is protected, and what is challenged.

The American flag becomes both backdrop and tension, a symbol of identity layered with contradiction. The child figure represents me, and the many children who grow up navigating overlapping cultures, languages, and expectations.

She carries the complexity of loving this country while learning where it does not always love her back. The repeated protest language refuses silence, it names what has too often been softened or ignored.

The small dog is Picasso, my companion of seventeen years and a witness to every version of my adulthood. His act of peeing on melting ice is intentional, irreverent and protective. It is a refusal to revere systems that cause harm. The melting surface suggests fragility, the instability of institutions that present themselves as immovable.