Created in response to Target selling a children’s Halloween costume in 2026 that was criticized for resembling blackface and minstrel caricature.
The costume was marketed as a “circus clown.” But in America, imagery does not exist without history. The exaggerated grin, darkened face and theatrical presentation immediately recall a racist visual tradition that was used for generations to mock and dehumanize Black people.
What unsettles me most is not only that the costume existed, but that it made its way through design, production, approval, marketing and onto the website of one of the largest retailers in the country.
How can an American corporation be so disconnected from such a significant and painful part of American history?
The flags, price tags and smiling faces in this work place that history inside the language of contemporary American consumerism: packaged, priced, approved and sold as something new.
There is nothing new about it.
This work is part of my ongoing Distortion Studies series, where I use animation, glitch and visual interruption to push still images into something more unstable and emotionally charged.
The base image was created with my personalized MidJourney model (v8.2), developed around my own visual language and collage practice. I then manually added the animation and distortion effects using RIBT//Labs, using movement and disruption to heighten the unease at the center of the piece.
