Service, Performance, and Politics (American)

Service, Performance, and Politics (American)
Hannah Harley Bouleau

Service, Performance, and Politics (American) is an interrogation of the visual and spatial mechanics used to construct, maintain, and dismantle power within the United States. This exhibition bridged the gap between the theater of national ambition and the tactile, often neglected reality of local governance. The manufactured persona present in the series Statecraft (2017) and Margaret Hanson (2017) clash with the mundane infrastructure of democracy in the series The Home Front (2016) and This is What Democracy Looks Like (2017). Together, these four bodies of work explore how political identity can be both a carefully managed performance and a deeply human labor of service.

The exhibition is anchored by four intersecting investigations into the scenography of the current American political environment:

Statecraft (2017) - In this series, the artist uses her face as a canvas to create dozens of distinct characters through the manipulation of hair, makeup, and expression. The work functions as a mirror for viewers’ internal biases, utilizing a participatory voting system in the installation that challenges the audience to perform an instantaneous vetting of each face.

The Home Front (2016)- A photographic examination of the makeshift office spaces used in the final weeks of the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. Each photograph was taken during the two weeks prior to the 2016 election. These images focus on the utilitarian aesthetic of temporary headquarters and office spaces. It reveals the gap between the monumental scale of the American Presidency and the fragile, human-scale environments built to pursue it.

Margaret Hanson (2017) - Based on the first round of voting during the initial Statecraft (2017) installations, the artist adopts a fictional persona navigating the aesthetics of regional politics, mimicking the visual cues of campaign mailers and local news headers. By exploring the presentation of the female politician, the work questions how much of our political identity is built on managed visual cues that signal specific values.

This is What Democracy Looks Like (2017) - Moving away from the national media narrative, this series examines the physical offices of local elected officials. These spaces are presented as tactile, mundane, and deeply human. The images serve as a testament to the individuals who maintain the infrastructure of daily life, offering a counter-narrative to the "theatre of ideals" found in higher levels of government.

Service, Performance, and Politics (American) strips away the lofty expectations of the political stage to reveal the tools and environments necessary for crafting voters and constituents.