Theodore A. Harris, The Capitol Vetoed (1995-2023), 2023, 24”x44”, mixed media collage printed on paper.

The Capitol Vetoed

The Capitol Vetoed (1995-2023) is an updated version of my 1995 collage Vetoed Dreams in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts. The impetus for updating Vetoed Dreams was when I came across still images from the movie Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956) The images of the saucers attacking the U.S. Capitol building and other monuments in Washington D.C. are haunting and remind me of the attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, by anti democratic forces to overthrow the current democratically elected President. My use of appropriating a still image from a film made in the mid 1950’s is my poetic attempt to create a collage reflecting in it, our republic in a funhouse mirror, becoming unglued in a country whose “think tanks” are anti-intellectual romper rooms.

Broken Windows Theory for Broken Hearts for Jonathan Eburne

Peering out from your “broken windows theory” we witnessed whiteness weaponized, invading the U.S. The Capitol Building like dangerous little tikes breaching a Bouncy House, aggressive paper boys and girls hustling fake news. Those anti-intellectual, formalist-hawks, gouged out the eyes of “blue lives matter” lobbyists, as they hopscotched in the chalk outlines of our vaccinated blood-yellin, lying lungs barking “I CAN’T BREATHE!” from their maskless-gargoyle faces and the more they bounced the more hot air and blood spilled from the inflation tube of deflated consciousness…

Excerpt from After Somebody Blew Up America: An Interview with Theodore A. Harris and Jonathan Eburne ASAP/J  September 23, 2021.

Theodore A. Harris was born in 1966 in New York City and raised in Philadelphia, where his art practice is based. Harris is Director and Founder of The Institute for Advanced Study in Black Aesthetics, and in 2007 joined the Visual Artists Network. In 1985 he co-founded the acclaimed Anti-Graffiti Network/Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, and he has taught there since then. Harris is a collagist, poet, and author of Thesentür: Conscientious Objector to Formalism, and co-author of books with Amiri Baraka: Our Flesh of Flames (Willow Books) and Malcolm X as Ideology (LeBow Books); with Fred Moten: i ran from it and was still in it (Cusp Books); as well as TRIPTYCH: Text by Amiri Baraka and Jack Hirschman (Caza de Poesía). Harris has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and is in public and private collections.