Found-object sculptures, dimensions variable. 2011.

Until the Iraq War, I pictured our current military endeavors as streamlined, high-tech operations. The makeshift weapons of September 11th , the London and Madrid bombings, and the widespread use of IEDs in the decade following came in stark contrast to this; in some of my projects, I use imagery of IEDs to explore my fears of these low-tech weapons. Visually, I feel their unsophisticated appearance brings forth ideas of these weapons being used anywhere at anytime, and most importantly, by anyone. In a sense, they are more frightening than attacks by conventional weapons, as they are not relegated to defined theatres of war.

For this series of works about IEDs, I collected household objects, assembled them to look like rigged bombs, and photographed them to appear life-size. Transistors, hobby-sized compressed air canisters, eraser caps, and other familiar objects are assembled into somewhat absurd-looking pseudo-bombs. As assemblages, they reference the way in which actual IEDs are made: combining common materials like cell phones, alarm clocks, gasoline, and metal containers to create something larger than the sum of its parts.

The IED works are also influenced by the surreal nature of some of the high-profile failed terrorist attacks from the past decade, such as the Underwear Bomber and the Shoe Bomber. When the Shoe Bomber made his attempt, the idea that something like footwear could be used as a weapon of mass destruction was both incredible and preposterous to me; I still find it amazing that a single person was able to elevate a such simple and common object to one to be feared. I find the psychological effects of such a makeshift weapons to be quite interesting; in the IED sculptures, I focus on this overlap of the absurd and the terrifying.