Heresy • Hearsay  ::  Groundswell 2014  ::  Olana State Historic Site

Heresy • Hearsay was the first sculpture to be exhibited from the Farther Land series of work. The sculpture presented a series of open doorways to look upon the landscape. It was inspired by the notion of the American dream as articulated by the founders and the development of manifest destiny. Heresy • Hearsay offers a site specific, tongue-in-cheek, upside-down pyramid as an architectural folly. It was a critique of both the idealistic consumption and reshaping of the environment and the transformation of formerly native lands into the utopia that are these United States of America.

Farther Land  ::  artist statement  ::  2014 - Present

Multimedia installation artist Kenseth Armstead’s recent work explores the African-American experience inside the American Revolution. Farther Land symbolically reflects on 10 years of the artist’s research on the true story of slave turned double-agent spy James Armistead Lafayette. The founders’ high ideals and the penalty for deviation from them are both reshaped as objects that relate this point of view. The series responds to the age of revolution and the founders’ declaration that “all men are created equal” with irony and suggestive material content.