Stuart Hawkins: Blue Eyes

Priya Bhatnagar in Flash Art has written "Threatening to unravel pop culture's abstractions, Hawkins's images call into question the socially coded nature of its identities, icons, meanings and values while contesting its homogenization of beauty and fashion. Joel Sternfeld's foreword calls this survey of recent work "an achievement of the first magnitude." Inviting friends and strangers in Nepal to pose for the camera, Blue Eyes includes three photographic series and three video projects that reveal the ubiquity of American media culture while underscoring certain behaviors as they pertain to global capitalism and race. Each image investigates the experience of cultural imperialism as seen through the eyes of those living in the developing world. Hawkins highlights the visual dialogue that comprises consumer and popular culture and asks the viewer to consider a world of differences increasingly veiled by surface similarities.