Government Cheese
Government Cheese signifies the convention of white supremacy that covers up difference and autonomy and places people who face housing insecurity, unemployment, food insecurity, disability, gender discrimination and/or racism in an outgroup.
Process American cheese has a history that parallels the rhetoric around shame and government assistance. It was mass produced in the 1980s recession during the Reagan administration. Around the same time he coined the term “welfare queens,” accusing women of collecting excessive welfare payments without need. It was a way of blaming people for their hardship. When government assistance was purposefully limited through budget cuts and hunger became one of the only accessible problems that local communities could temporarily resolve, emergency food programs started popping up in churches and grassroots organizations formed.
This work examines the fallacy of the American dream and embodies the drippings of a dying empire.
Medium: wooden chair, approx. 250 lbs of process American cheese
25 x 25 x 35 inches
2022