CHELE ISAAC

This collection of objects and video was a result of years-long conversations about contemporary cultural ideas grounded in Manifest Destiny and nostalgia around the "Myth of the West." These works often featured a mythical character known as The Orange Gingham Man (OGM) –a figure clad in a mis-matched orange gingham suit who exists outside of strict binaries of male/female, before/after, heroic/pathetic, etc. This character exists not in an either/or but a space of and/and.
 

The project was guided by an inquiry into how nostalgia– first described as a medical condition in 1688– influences our understanding of what it is to be an American in the 21st century. Originally nostalgia was used to describe homesickness in foreign theaters of war, but later refined to mean a disorder that presented “erroneous representations” of the thing one longed for. 

 

Politicians, pundits, and religious leaders find resonance (and power)  by describing the way forward as a sort of return to the past-- a route charted by deep divisiveness  and a determination to define "American" within an ever-narrowing scope. This work, born of the quintessential cross-country roadtrip and endless conversations with strangers who threw us off-course and back again, sought to trouble that narrative by queering the landscape, following serendipitous clues and opening our hearts to the "all" of it and the awe of it.