Caroline Santa
New Work Future Past Imperfect Portraits New Work 2008 More Tiny Drawings Tiny Drawings Made in Colombia Spring 2007 Trait Diagrams
Living in this world means navigating a tangled web of truths, half-truths, and lies. We can’t even trust the news. Facts are hidden or falsified. One person or event may be seen as good or evil, depending on who you talk to.

I collect photographs of world events from the 1980's to the present-my own cognitive experience with the world. As history unfolds, the meaning of the photograph continuously changes as we compile information. I use these open events are the matrix for other narratives.

What’s really happening is ambiguous. I strip the image of it’s original meaning-the figures and places could be anyone or anywhere. The essence of the action or place remains visible-enhanced, isolated, transformed, buried, or mutated. Layers of information are covered in gray oblivion, sanded away, or built up again.

I need a reason for working beyond just the formal. Hence, I developed a code by defining colors as specific traits (See Trait Diagrams). This code gives me a concrete trajectory to generate both the content and formal aspects of the work in tandem.