Photo By Gail

west (2008) is a lightbox, a technology typically used in commercial signage that artist Doug Aitken has long retooled for aesthetic purposes. Here, the word “west“ is formed by glowing photographs of tract houses, repeating in loose grids across the horizon. This is an ironic and satirical take on the credo of Manifest Destiny, a slogan that swept the United States in the 19th century, holding that western expansion towards the Pacific Ocean was both a divine right and duty. In west, Aitken proposes that this history can be seen from a different perspective, that the dream of the West was simply a pretext for swift development, resource acquisition, and the submission of existing lands and peoples to an imposed order.

Photographed in The Broad Museum in Los Angeles.