A public art installation in Times Square, Untitled (Miss America) used ambiguity as a means to compel individual interpretation. [+]The installation presented a decontextualized icon from our cultural memory as a prompt – a trigger to compel us to consider our national values as represented by our ossifying media-institutions. [+]

The billboard contained a grid of 30 video stills, each one selected from footage of the Miss America pageant. The images were taken from the climax of the pageant’s narrative, the moment in which the crown is placed on the head of the winning contestant. These images, and the final installation, were pure spectacle in the Situationist definition of the term – a reduction of meaning into empty fetishes of consumption through mass media. The installation asks what these spectacles say about our cultural values in terms of success, achievement, and social worth. The project was installed for 60 days.

Dimensions: 25 x 36 ft.
Materials: Digitally printed vinyl