Witnesses to Empire
Witnesses to Empire explicitly rejects the objectifying framework of US imperialism: By omitting the human subjects and tracing only the surrounding plants of Dean Worcester’s colonial photographs, I disrupt the visual logic of the colonial gaze.
Dean Worcester, who first arrived in the Philippines in 1887, became an influential colonial administrator during US colonial rule. He developed a large photographic archive of over 15,000 images. As postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon teaches us, Worcester’s images exemplify how the colonial gaze reduces the colonized subject to a state of “crushing objecthood,” reshaping self-perception by framing the colonized body as inherently inferior. This fundamentally alters the conditions of recognition. Worcester deliberately staged his images to construct a Filipino subject that proved white American “superiority” and to justify the assertion that Filipinos were “unfit” to self-govern, reinforcing hierarchies of race and power.
In the Witnesses to Empire series, I trace images of plants with indigo ink on handmade paper to reimagine these plants as silent witnesses to American imperialism in the Philippines. By drawing something new from the colonial past, I give power to the non-human actors who witnessed that violent history unfold.
Dean Worcester, who first arrived in the Philippines in 1887, became an influential colonial administrator during US colonial rule. He developed a large photographic archive of over 15,000 images. As postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon teaches us, Worcester’s images exemplify how the colonial gaze reduces the colonized subject to a state of “crushing objecthood,” reshaping self-perception by framing the colonized body as inherently inferior. This fundamentally alters the conditions of recognition. Worcester deliberately staged his images to construct a Filipino subject that proved white American “superiority” and to justify the assertion that Filipinos were “unfit” to self-govern, reinforcing hierarchies of race and power.
In the Witnesses to Empire series, I trace images of plants with indigo ink on handmade paper to reimagine these plants as silent witnesses to American imperialism in the Philippines. By drawing something new from the colonial past, I give power to the non-human actors who witnessed that violent history unfold.
Materials: Charcoal, acrylic, and ink on handmade paper (abaca, gampi, dried banana leaves) mounted on unstretched canvas
Dimensions: 55 in x 73 in
Date: 2025
Dimensions: 55 in x 73 in
Date: 2025