Books are rarely banned because they are dangerous. They are banned because they make certain people visible.

BARSON responds to the resurgence of book bans, censorship campaigns, and attacks on libraries throughout the United States. Drawing on literary history, political memory, and the Empty Library memorial in Berlin, the work examines how the suppression of ideas becomes the suppression of people.

Throughout history, those seeking power have attempted to control not only what can be said, but what can be remembered. By limiting access to stories, they limit access to perspectives, identities, and possibilities for understanding one another. The result is not simply ignorance, but isolation.

Embedded with fragments of books and texts concerned with liberty, knowledge, and expression, BARSON stands as both warning and memorial. It asks viewers to consider what kind of society is created when curiosity becomes suspect, complexity becomes dangerous, and certain stories are deemed unworthy of being told.

Acrylic, holographic powder, chrome, glow in the dark pigment powder, book covers, book

pages, highlighter, marker, ink, oil pastels, spray paint on canvas (front and back).

30 x 40 inches