From the series: Proof of Purchase
Mixed media with found packaging, hardware, thread, and resin
22 × 28 inches
2026
Description:
In Status - Modified, Constantine examines how identity is altered through systems of conquest, extraction, and cultural repackaging. Throughout history, dominant powers have seized land, labor, and cultural production, often rejecting the people from whom these elements originated while simultaneously absorbing and refining their output.
The subject’s eyes are not his own. They have been removed from companion figures within the trilogy and stitched into place, visibly stapled, visibly forced. The gesture echoes historical processes of assimilation and aesthetic correction, where difference is not destroyed outright, but reformatted to align with prevailing standards.
The work references the colonial logic of “improvement”; the act of taking what exists, stripping it of origin, and reintroducing it as elevated or optimized once detached from its source. Identity becomes editable. Culture becomes extractable. Value becomes reassigned.
Unlike the overt transaction of Status - Sold, this work addresses what happens after acquisition: refinement, whitening, normalization. The violence is procedural rather than explosive.
Encased in resin, the evidence of modification is preserved. The surface refuses to conceal the intervention. The work asks: when something is made to appear “better,” who benefits and who disappears?
From the series: Proof of Purchase
Mixed media with found packaging, hardware, thread, and resin
22 × 28 inches
2026
Description:
In Status - Modified, Constantine examines how identity is altered through systems of conquest, extraction, and cultural repackaging. Throughout history, dominant powers have seized land, labor, and cultural production, often rejecting the people from whom these elements originated while simultaneously absorbing and refining their output.
The subject’s eyes are not his own. They have been removed from companion figures within the trilogy and stitched into place, visibly stapled, visibly forced. The gesture echoes historical processes of assimilation and aesthetic correction, where difference is not destroyed outright, but reformatted to align with prevailing standards.
The work references the colonial logic of “improvement”; the act of taking what exists, stripping it of origin, and reintroducing it as elevated or optimized once detached from its source. Identity becomes editable. Culture becomes extractable. Value becomes reassigned.
Unlike the overt transaction of Status - Sold, this work addresses what happens after acquisition: refinement, whitening, normalization. The violence is procedural rather than explosive.
Encased in resin, the evidence of modification is preserved. The surface refuses to conceal the intervention. The work asks: when something is made to appear “better,” who benefits and who disappears?
