Have we perverted society, or has society perverted us?
If you glanced at yesterday’s newspaper headlines without seeing the date, you’d be forgiven thinking we were back in the 1940’s. White supremacists are rallying, neo-Nazis are banding together, and we are witnessing the emergence and rise of a fascism that wants only to foster hate and division. What a stark difference this day is from one of those that existed in ‘The Delusional Grandeur‘ stretch of 2015, the last time Alan Ilagan released a project, and how much the world has changed in three short years…
The very act of loving can be a revolutionary act. It is a revolt against all that is ugly and base and mean in this world, an argument against all that is hateful and wrong. It strikes back at the heart of apathy, taking deadly aim at the notion of not caring. It engages and demands a response, far more than a hateful attack or wanton dismissal. Yet love is outwardly lacking in ‘PVRTD’, the new photographic project by Alan Ilagan; the images are diabolically lonesome, many are simply empty, static as death, and eerily silent. A mouth taped shut. Eyes taped closed. Hands taped still. Page after page of black and white contemplation. A series of an eye-patched general madly roaming a run-down factory. A gas mask in a duet with a Chinese hopping ghost. The haunting image of Ilagan having his head shaved by a menacing, faceless figure.
‘PVRTD’ brings him into hazardous new territory and is already being heralded as beautifully disturbing. The themes and images he touches on – the Holocaust, white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan – are cultural totems, each rife with layers of historical hurt. Playing around with such images can be a hazardous business, and many artists have been burned by getting too close without understanding or realizing the deep-seeded connotations and offense that might result.
Yet now more than ever such a reminder may be needed. It’s dangerous folly to think that something similar won’t happen again – gay men and women are being killed around the world, even more transgender people are attacked and murdered – and the suicide rates for both groups are exponentially higher than heterosexuals. What if the real perversion is not of nature or of being different, but a man-made symptom? What if the most perverted thing is the hatred that separates one person from another?
‘PVRTD’ offers no such up-front explanation to its mysterious images, and even less of a defense for the more controversial photographs. Anyone who is brave enough to face the past, and more importantly anyone who is brave enough to own up to the present, knows what is being conveyed. It is a test of our own moral turpitude as to what we are going to do about it. ‘PVRTD’ posits, provokes, and projects – staking its claim in the pantheon of art as social revolution.
{‘PVRTD’ will be released online at ALANILAGAN.com in November 2018.}
