This work began with a spark: a moment in current events where public debate was cut short by violence. I was struck by how quickly dialogue can be silenced, and how symbols of liberty can be twisted into something darker.

Here, Liberty’s torch becomes a gun, and her face is replaced with a mannequin – erasing identity and removing the power of speech. Without a mouth, there is only silence; without features, only the costume of Liberty remains. Is this Liberty at all, or an imposter, one whose only gesture is violence?

The reduced, vintage-style palette situates the work both in the present and in a longer continuum, echoing the assassinations of Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Lincoln, and most recently Charlie Kirk: moments when debate and discourse were ended by the gun.

In the background, there is the ghostly outline of a starship – symbolic of science, exploration, and discovery, the opposite of violence. Its opacity raises a question: does it mark an ideal fading from view, or a hope that can still be saved?

Where is the future?