EVAN APODACA

Monumental Interventions, 2023, video, 19 minutes

Monumental Interventions is a video installation depicting illusory worlds where the built material of our municipal environments come to life to confront the hyper-militarization of Southern California and beyond. A 10-by-10-foot vinyl wallpaper is immediately visible in the installation, illustrating a mix of camouflage-like clouds marked by close-ups of horizontal heads surrounded by Southern California sunset hues. Foregrounded at the center is a video where animated statues and architecture are the result of motion-tracked individual testimonies and performed monologues, which explore revolutionary and international solidarity beyond U.S. imperialism and colonial borders. The video installation critically examines how the region was chosen as a place of geopolitical strategy for U.S. control in Latin America and the Pacific as well as the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. Most poignantly, it delves into the hyper-patriotism within San Diego’s social and physically constructed environment. The illusion of the installation draws the viewer in, acting as a smokescreen that camouflages the subversion of the state-sanctioned simulacra of our built environment. This public installation was censored and removed from an exhibition at the San Diego International Airport in February, 2023, due to public complaints about  it being “woke.”