Using photography as a point of departure, drawings in pastel represent the restlessness and ambiguity of modern life exacerbated by messages from the media. Young actors are cast to retell stories of recent news events taken from print and online media. Situations are choreographed and photographed in the studio or on location. The captured images are edited, with information erased or activated and combined with photographs taken of the detritus from neighborhood streets. Each element is chosen carefully, each a piece in the narrative puzzle. The resulting collages become studies for life size drawings.

I have chosen to focus this work on the media within the culture of consumption.  In these images we see figures drifting through the world as if they are experiencing amnesia. They consume the information without absorbing it. With the potential to represent several realities at once, information and communication media requires us to suspend personal identity and choice. The confusing and often contradictory experience of witnessing and taking in such realities has shaped our culture into one that is concerned with economic prosperity in spite of the consequences. The fragmentary experience of contemporary media has resulted in information overload and a cultural identity crisis.

Donna Anderson Kam Resume.pdf