1997

57 x 79.5cm (22.5 x 31.5in)

Poster colour, gouache and gold dust on mountboard

 

'Manhattan Mall 'captures a specific memory of the artist's visit to the USA in 1996. She is depicted with her twin sister and uncle enjoying a Chinese meal in the food hall on the top floor of Manhattan Mall, a famous shopping arcade overlooking the distinctive city scape of New York. This impressive conglomeration of Broadway billboards, Macy's store, commercial adverts, Statue of Liberty and looming skyscrapers (including Empire Estate and Chrysler Buildings) represents the 'American Dream' with all its razzmatazz, promise of financial success, material status and freedom for individuals.

            On first sight the painting appears as a fitting tribute to the vast economic development of this 'land of opportunity and equality'. However, towards the bottom of the painting a Native American Indian family are shown seated at a table in an obscure corner of the Mall. The empty look on their faces "betrays the irony of an 'American Dream' which for the 'true' inhabitants of America was a nightmare of cultural and commercial exploitation, that not only deprived them of their land and freedom but was responsible for their virtual extinction". The artist shows them staring in bewilderment at another popular symbol of American 'achievement' - burger and french fries complete with the 'free' gift of a plastic wigwam! This, together with the tourist map of Yosemite National Park, which the father carries, are a sad reminder of a way of life that is lost forever, and of the high price they have involuntarily paid for an 'American Dream' which they themselves had no interest or stake in. They also signify for the artist "the continued exploitation and token status which a once thriving and noble culture have had to suffer in the building of an America whose contemporary society seems only to value the Native American chapter of its past in terms of its 'punter pulling' profit potential within the shallow world of cheap sales gimmicks and tourism".

            Within this context the Statue of Liberty (top right) - heralded as a universal symbol of freedom, hope and American generosity - in fact represents for the artist "a testament to imposed bondage, despair and American greed because what Lady Liberty offers to successive waves of immigrants is that which she has stolen from others".

 

copyright the artists