"Afterimage" emerged from the depths of my unconscious as a violent impression of trauma. The afterimage trauma is the trauma I felt as an immature teenager when I was subjected to our broken and biased criminal justice system (during the pretrial and trial stages). It is the trauma inflicted by our civilized society when eye-for-an-eye vengeance is the sole penological goal, no matter how excessive or primitive the punishment.
In this visual art, two faces of revenge project from the stained background. They are designed to strike viewers as relics of retribution, that antiquated form of punishment that appeals to our baser selves. And yet the trauma disfiguring their features is felt in the here and now. I can't help feeling that the past is alive in the present! Marred and fractured, both faces sustain irreparable harm, including a loss of an eye, in "proportional" retaliation, according to our justice system.
And then there are those lines. Truly, they have fallen, their shadows cast, though not in pleasant places. They represent what has been meted out and allotted under retributive justice: death and destruction, pain and suffering, violence upon violence, trauma upon trauma. In short, cyclical violence.
Afterimage
So "Afterimage" is a visual witness to society's use of retribution, rather than rehabilitation, as the overarching goal of criminal justice. Behold the harsh effects!
If we continue to promote cyclical violence at the expense of rehabilitation, it's just a matter of time until whole communities are left completely blind and traumatized. For who is without fault? Who has not harmed another? And damn your intentions when you do harm because I surely did not intend to cause death as a teenager, and yet my life is required.
This is old-fashioned retribution: an eye for an eye!