year: 2004
materials black ink on 140# cardstock
size: 26 x 40 inches
source: Donald Brown, "Human Universals"
A text piece loosely based on anthropologist Donald Brown’s compilation (in his book “Human Universals”) of behavioral traits common to every human culture. The piece plays on the genre of the motivational/inspirational text poster, adopting a tone of exhortation which advises/commands readers to do things that in all likelihood they have already done or will inevitably do. Like much of my work, it attempts to make a grand statement by exploring and exhausting all the implications and logical conclusions of one simple idea, and to make that statement into something of a monolith. In 2009, the piece earned the official blessing of Donald Brown, who had just retired from his career in anthropology at UC Santa-Barbara.