Erika Walker: The Great Experiment

This exhibition of new work by accomplished printmaker Ericka Walker explores the visual and rhetorical relationship between war-era propaganda and continued notions of patriotism, capitalism, and white supremacy in North America.

The exhibition’s title refers to an essay, penned by American John O’Sullivan in 1845, which popularized the notion of manifest destiny and reassured settlers of their right to “overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty.” Images of industry, agriculture, and warfare mix with jingoistic fragments of text drawn from a variety historical sources. Walker’s work challenges the moral authority of nation-building ideals using the same visual language that has been used to entrench them.