Broken Windows

2015. LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, NY.

Broken Windows is a three part work created during my senior thesis at Columbia University. It includes a series of documentary photographs, a documentary film, titled GTA: Profile Patrol and a looped video, titled In The Criminal Justice System. Through the juxtaposition of interviews, tv audio, advertising footage, video game footage and photography, I explore the intersections of race, power and play in the context of the New York City Police Department.

This work was informed by my experiences living in Crown Heights amidst a heightened police presence. In 2014, I began documenting the NYPD's occupation of Black and Latino neighbourhoods throughout New York City while researching the various television shows, video games and forms of entertainment that symbolically reinforce the idea of policing as a necessity and that serve as a form of propaganda for the NYPD. At this time, there was an increase in the practice of Broken Windows policing, a strategy that encourages increased patrol and arrests for minor offenses in areas with higher crime rates — operating within a system of racial bias, this leads to increased criminalization, surveillance and violent arrests of people of color living in the city.

The video work, In The Criminal Justice System, draws inspiration from advertising and from the popular television series, Law and Order, a show I grew up watching. It was shown alongside the short documentary film, GTA: Profile Patrol, featuring two Black NYPD officers who anonymously share their experiences working on the police force and being policed by their peers. Their interviews are juxtaposed with video game footage of the police from Grand Theft Auto. Through the intersections of race, power and play, I explore the ways that symbolic power is deployed across generations, and its impact on communities that this power is often wielded against.