Robin Starbuck

Tribe/Nation/Occupation, Study I
gouache on paper
22 x 30 in.

Tribe/Nation/Occupation, Study II
gouache on paper
22 x 30 in.

The Tribe/Nation/Occupation series has been developed for large scale installations with the gouache images shown here acting as studies for the wall painted murals utilized in this work. I am appropriating Bazooka comic images altering both text and the image configuration as specific cultural commentary. The series emphasizes various ironies implicit in applied stereotypes of Native American and African American cultures in an attempt to expose the vernacular of dominance still remnant in America’s perception of these communities.

Visually, I draw upon some of the more obvious troupes of Pop Art. However, where Pop Art applauded the selection of the ready-made from a variety of cultural objects, in my work – in it’s post pop art mode, “the image (object) becomes the property of self consciousness, a negation of it’s object made by it’s framing in a new narrative”.

© Robin Starbuck