Thank you to curators
@eric.est.petit ,
@amalya__graham and
@josiahbrart for including my 2022 painting “Sidewalk, Page Eleven” in Towards Détournement at the
@visualartscenter in Austin. I am so excited to be a part of this show with so many incredible artists!
Towards Détournement is on view at the Visual Arts Center through March 14. Exhibition text below:
In 1967, French political theorist Guy Debord published the book The Society of the Spectacle, which argued that the expansion of capitalism and mass media fostered a passive lifestyle. Everyday life experiences, he argued, were replaced with experiences and relationships mediated through images and commodities. Debord termed this phenomenon “the spectacle” and proposed détournement, which translates to “hijacking” or “rerouting” in English, as a strategy to divert the spectacle and the social structures it upheld. Détournement takes the forms through which capitalism and mass media reach people—products, newspapers, advertisements, art—and exposes them as tools for presenting and affirming the ideas, institutions, and narratives that benefit a ruling class. In Towards Détournement, fifteen artists interrogate the role of power in images; they ask how images can dismantle other images and the values they affirm. The included artists work across mediums to position familiar forms in new, unexpected contexts, undermine artistic tropes, and create works that resist categorization and reflect the nuances and ambiguity of reality.
Artists: Nathan Anthony, Josiah Brown, John DeSousa, Rosie Ganske, Amalya Graham, Calhan Hale, Tyson Humbert, Ariana Kimball, Simon Leahy-Clark, Charlie Mura, Sub Net, Chloe Pruett, Tiffany K. Smith, Olivia Wallace, Will Wilson
Images 1 and 2: Installation view of Towards Détournement at the Visual Arts Center, 2026. Photo: Alex Boeschenstein
Image 3: “Sidewalk, Page Eleven”, 2022. Oil on canvas 36x48 in. Photo:
@andreacalo 
