These works use the lithographic propaganda platform to look more broadly at problematic domestic legacies of colonialism, in addition to the military musculature of national identity. They suspect the efficacy of insisting upon white male civility as an enduring national brand in North America, and call into question the Herculean efforts continually made on behalf of its promotion. Problematic concepts such as manifest destiny and The West are common themes, suggesting what has been - and continues to be - a rhetorical spearhead for imperialism. Individual works quote extensively from treaties between indigenous and settler populations, as well as language from prominent political speeches and state documents of both the distant and recent past. The pieces illustrate some of the most ingenious tools ever invented for the management and industrial consumption of natural resources, and draw on the tradition of caricature as both a form of entertainment and means of self-mythologization.

Walker’s practice operates on vernacular histories of the graphic arts. Her print works and site-specific murals subvert the propagandistic function of nostalgia in contemporary culture, disputing the civilizing influence and assumed moral authority of nation building in North America. Ericka Walker received a BS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She lives and works in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she is an Assistant Professor at NSCAD University.

Miranda Metcalf is the founder and host of pine | copper | lime, the internet’s number one printmaking podcast. She grew up in the Pacific Northwest of The United States, studied philosophy of aesthetics at the University of Washington, and art history with a focus in printmaking for her master’s degree at the University of Arizona. She is a former intern at the Smithsonian’s American Art Archives in Washington D.C., former director of contemporary works on paper at Davidson Galleries in Seattle, former assistant to the director at Cicada Press in Sydney, and currently the director of programming at SAC Gallery in Bangkok.