The History of the End of the World

January 4, 2018 ART/PHOTOGRAPHY

Men See a New Age

By

Todd Hawkins

I am a poet who comes to visual art with an eye toward the juxtaposition of con/text and image. My poetry and art both focus on found forms and historically based sources. A Choctaw tribal member, I am motivated by my ancestry to give voice to the often-silenced actors of American history. Arguably, one of the best ways to do this is through the images and texts that are already before us, employing the familiar, the known, to bring new discoveries to light. In that spirit, I created this series of collages, part of a larger text-and-art project called The History of the End of the World.

Inspired by the Dadaists, I approach collage as an extension or companion of found poetry. Here, I have tried to present familiar images and narratives in unique, unsettling ways. For materials, I used my Cold-War era middle school American history textbook, lifestyle magazines from the 1950s and 60s, old Texas high school yearbooks, and geology manuals in English and Polish. Taken together, these collages present an alternative con/text for viewing the way history was taught to Gen Xers at the end of the twentieth century. Though these images and texts first appeared decades ago, I hope to lay bare the ways all prescribed history conflicts with and parallels contemporary existence.