Baton, Jersey, America’s Team - Collector’s Edition (2023)
This series examines the alignment of sports culture with institutional policing in the United States, exploring how collective identity and loyalty operate across both domains. Each object in the installation adopts the aesthetic conventions of sports memorabilia, reframing symbols of policing within a different, but structurally parallel, cultural context.
A police baton, signed and numbered, resembles the presentation of a baseball bat at auction. A framed jersey, bearing the insignia of the NYPD and the logo of a major non-lethal weapons manufacturer, echoes the display of fan apparel. A photographic print captures a moment of tear gas deployment—presented in the style of commercial prints that commemorate historic plays or championships.
Together, these works draw out the visual and material language shared between policing and sport—ritual, branding, allegiance—and the implications of treating institutional violence with the reverence typically reserved for entertainment. Statistical comparisons underscore this framing: the NYPD’s budget would rank it among the world’s militaries, while CS gas, a commonly deployed crowd control weapon, is banned under international law in wartime.