bomb bless(es) america

2025

How easily violence is cloaked in patriotic symbolism- obscured, beautified, and forgotten. Our collective memory is fragile, vulnerable to decoration, distortion, and denial. 

Using the aesthetic language of celebration, love, and national pride, this work unmasks the grotesque paradox of American exceptionalism. By cataloging moments of extreme violence—often justified under the rhetoric of “freedom,” “democracy,” or “counter-terrorism”—this installation quietly accuses.
Who decides what is terrorism, and what is defense?
When does the protection of democracy become its betrayal?
What is considered acceptable collateral damage in the pursuit of political and military dominance?

Each heart is etched with the record of a U.S. military airstrike or operation involving the deployment of explosives—Hiroshima, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and so on—each detailing the tonnage of bombs dropped, the type of weaponry used, and the number of civilian lives lost.
Bomb Bless America seeks not only to deceive visually, but to confront morally. It offers no answers—only a lingering unease and a call to question the narratives we are taught to hold dear.