Arcadia Disrupted

The suburban built environment sanitizes our relationship with the non-human world by flattening ecological processes under the supersystem of capitalism. My upbringing in the densely populated suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia shaped my experience of nature as being separate from myself. Plant and animal life are repeatedly replaced by the asphalt of planned developments, where our interactions with nature can be meticulously managed. Suburbia is the modern result of oppressive systems that have sought to control every aspect of the material world, including people, for centuries. Each piece in my thesis exhibition, Arcadia Disrupted, examines aspects of how suburban psychology reinforces the idea that humans operate separately from the rest of the biosphere. By using the material excesses of capitalism, of which I am complicit, I emphasize the myopic attitude of suburban design and inhabitancy.