AN INTERVIEW WITH HECTOR RENÉ MEMBREÑO-CANALES

By Aaron Hughes

Every 4th of July brings a new round of performed patriotism. There are the parades, ceremonies, fireworks, and the shelves stocked with flag draped consumables. A number of artists in the emerging Veteran Art Movement have taken note of this performed patriotism. Notably, Hector René Membreño-Canales has started the Index of Patriotic Consumption, a photographic archive of the many consumer items draped in the Red, White, and Blue. In a description of the project Hector writes, “Examining what the average American watches, reads, eats, buys, and “Likes,” can reveal how American patriotism materializes on the sides of beer cans at NFL games.”

In this in-depth interview Membreño-Canales discusses the inspirations for his expansive project Index of Patriotic Consumption, the questions it raises about patriotism, and what patriotism means to him. The interview is packed with powerful insights worth considering especially around the 4th of July weekend.

Hector René Membreño-Canales, Index of Patriotic Consumption. — Hector René Membreño-Canales, *Index of Patriotic Consumption*.

Aaron Hughes (AH): Where did the concept and phrase “patriotic consumption” come from?

Hector René Membreño-Canales (HRMC): It comes out of frustration. Simply putting yellow ribbons on consumer goods does not make them adjacent to patriotism.

Patriotic branding is used as visual wartime language. It links symbols of patriotism with ideas of democracy and freedom through consumption to let people off the hook of civic responsibility. “Patriotic consumption” is passive. “Patriotic consumption” requires no active civic engagement such as protesting, organizing, volunteering, donating, canvassing, or voting.

AH: You do not have to be politically engaged to drink a can of Coca-Cola detailed with an American flag. The contradictions seem overwhelming. This consumption is celebrated and promoted as the patriotic thing to do, especially over the 4th of July weekend, while people recently rising up demanding racial justice and freedom from police violence are met with mass repression and in many cases scorned by politicians.

This all seems to imply that American democracy depends not on political engagement but on consumption. This kind of implication seems to be clearly captured in your “Index of Patriotic Consumption.” Can you tell us a bit about where the project came from. Was it a response to something specific?

HRMC: I was an intern in Hank Willis Thomas’ studio during my senior year of college. One of my tasks was to do photo-research of early and mid-century periodicals and books, for a project titled A Century of White Women. Briefly, the concept was to visually demonstrate how advertisers, (who were predominately straight white men) were constructing ideas of femininity vis-a-vis domestic household goods for the middle class, between 1915-2015.

While thumbing through archives of print advertisements, I took note of all the WWII era adverts that were domesticating the war effort. After that I began collecting my own World War II adverts from Coca-Cola, Nestle, Budweiser, General Motors, and Goodyear at flea markets, on ebay, and from friends. They were selling a collective sense of patriotic duty. The ads typically explained that if it was good enough for our “boys on the front line,” then it was good enough for American Domesticity.

I unsuccessfully worked with that material for more than two years—scanning, collaging, and manipulating those adverts in my studio but they remained pretty unresolved until my graduate professor (legendary artist Carrie Moyer whose early agit-prop work with Dyke Action Machine was a big inspiration to me as a student) asked me if there were instances of this in the post 9/11 landscape.

She argued, why make work about a war I didn’t serve in when there's work to be done now? That was a really activating experience as a student.

Hector René Membreño-Canales, Research for Index of Patriotic Consumption. — Hector René Membreño-Canales, Research for *Index of Patriotic Consumption*.

AH: That is a powerful question. To begin to place that kind of critical lens on your own military experience must have raised all kinds of internal questions and contradictions. What kind of contradictions does the project raise?

HRMC: That's a tricky question, I feel conflicted. Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, and Heinz are these huge multinational corporations that have collectively donated hundreds of millions of dollars to veteran organizations, which I think is great! I really do love the legacy of work the USO has done, but then I'm reminded that the Pentagon spent over 7 million dollars on paid patriotism at NFL games between 2012-2015. What the tax-payer got for that were fly-overs, reenlistment ceremonies, flag foldings, and special events geared toward recruiting.

This is especially complicated by who we think of as the “target audience” for military age recruiting and compare it to the target audience of the NFL. Not to mention how Colin Kapernick was treated for seeming “unpatriotic.”

AH: The NFL and other corporations are celebrated for performing patriotism while profiting off the military. Yet Kapernick’s demonstration for racial justice is labeled “unpatriotic.” As a veteran and service member, I wonder where that leaves you?

HRMC: I think a part of that question is examining dominant narratives around patriotism and getting beyond “thank you for your service.” As an artist, I’m interested in how veterans are represented. I don’t see myself in pop-culture representations of veterans because we’re illustrated as either downtrodden victims or stoic heroes. These representations aren’t particularly useful to understand the more complicated and nuanced experiences of veterans.

AH: Give examples of two photographs in the collection that are particularly telling. What is it about these objects that is particularly insightful?

HRMC: Definitely the Legos (full disclosure, they are unlicensed by Legos). The first time I saw them was at a vendor table in a PX. I thought to myself, who buys these? Who plays with these? Does it glorify terrorism? Does it reinforce the GWOT? I became interested in the politics of something so violent being mediated through something as “harmless” as kids toys. That perversion became more compelling than the actual objects.

AH: In the description of the project you write, “I am interested in the commodification, consumption, and representation of patriotism in advertising, media, culture, and religion, often overlapping in video games, TV shows, and sporting events.” If patriotism has become a commodity does patriotism actually exist?

HRMC: I don’t mean to hammer this home again but that type of corporate or capitalist patriotism is passive, and it inculcates well meaning people into participating in performative patriotism.

If the question is how might it be more honestly expressed as visual culture, I don’t know. What I do know is that I (or any one person) alone can’t decide, because it’s a collective milieu of visual culture. There is more than one type of patriotism, like protest, and that too is not immune to being commodified for a buck. That doesn't mean that patriotism is inherently a commodity, although the United States has gotten really good at exporting culture.

Glossy prime-time patriotism as seen on tv or in grocery stores is so omnipresent that when these objects have become the subject of my work, viewers often ask if these objects are “real” or they’ve been manipulated on photoshop. People have been surprised to discover that I bought the band-aids at a nearby pharmacy and the soda at a gas station. If you aren't paying attention you won’t notice it.

I think my experience as a veteran, my education in visual arts, and simply being a consumer like the rest of us has made me more sensitive to this phenomenon as part of a collective visual vocabulary.

I also want to be clear that I’m not arguing we stop waving flags or putting yellow ribbon magnets on our cars. I do think, however, that we should ask questions about intent and context when it’s used to obfuscate actual policies and campaigns via feel-good packaging.

Patriotism absolutely exists. It exists in the mental health counselors that work with veterans on suicide hotlines, it exists in the text and spoken word of Warrior Writers, it exists in community- not at the bottom of a ketchup bottle at Applebees.

I’m proud of my service, warts and all, but my pride doesn’t make it patriotic.

AH: Can you explain a bit more how you separate pride and patriotism?

HRMC: Just because you do something while in uniform does not necessarily make it patriotic. I’m proud of the humanitarian efforts I’ve contributed to while in uniform, but the uniform also implicates me in policy decisions decided by Congress. Thinking about how defense budgets are justified. Another example is the Afghanistan Papers. When the public is told something different from what is said internally, it's hard to be proud of that.

The pride in my service is not connected to anything heroic. But through my military service, I was able to move up the social ladder, make a better life for myself and my family, and develop the agency to make art.

My family left poverty and violence when we immigrated from Honduras. Even though we had a better life in the states, we were on the lower half of the social ladder as members of the immigrant class. The GI Bill changed my life.

Additionally, it was the proximity to power in the military that gave me a sense of my own agency. And agency is such a powerful and fickle thing. I mean, there is an audacity in believing that what you say, write, and make matters. It is not something to take for granted.

AH: You write, “Images disassociate from their original meaning and begin to represent something new.” What does this mean to you? How does it relate to the project?

HRMC: This relates to the (very specific) medium and tradition of photography in which I studied. My formative years in art school were filled with image-politics text by Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, John Berger, and Susan Sontag.

What I’m really saying is that photographs lie and trick us into believing that they are neutral because they are, after all, a mechanical recording of time, space, and light. This doesn’t account for intent, framing, scale, or gaze. Most photographers I know would agree; obviously, of course, because as the photographer I am subjectively deciding what to show you based on my gaze. What am I visually communicating by saying “look at this”- it’s important enough for me to compose and photograph then print and present.

The thing is, these are photographs of objects that have already gone through that entire creative process. Consider the product designer, the graphic designer, branding designer and the rest of the manufacturing team that put these objects on our store shelves.

I am photographing them and assembling them as an index, archive, and typography. This way their original intent is secondary to the patterns that will inevitably reveal themselves through the collection of many disparate objects ranging from toys, food and beverage, books, and supplies. It’s not much different from any other type of data collection. The aggregate discloses patterns. That is specific to photography.

AH: Will you continue to build this archive? At what point will the index be complete?

HRMC: I’m an art malingerer, so my projects have to happen on nights and weekends (or at an artist residency), so the project is still ongoing. I have several dozen objects that I’ve collected that have yet to be photographed and added to the Index, so yes, I will continue to work on it. I’m not sure when it will be complete, but I’ll say there is still a lot left to document.

AH: How does this project relate to other art projects. Can you give examples?

HRMC: I recently spoke with our good friend, veteran and visual artist Gerald Sheffield about this. He was a subject of earlier work when we were art students at the School of Visual Arts. In that earlier project Hegemony or Survival, the still lifes were in the tradition of Dutch still life paintings, whereas in the Index of Patriotic Consumption it is in the tradition of contemporary advertising. Those are largely aesthetic differences but conceptually, I’m interested in how history interacts with contemporary life, and I think that remains the same in a lot of my work.

Ultimately, a lot of my studio practice deals with the representation or rather, misrepresentation, of American patriotism, power, and visual identity. More recently it's come in the form of photographing confederate and colonizing monuments after they've been defaced or removed.

AH: In closing, I am wondering at this moment what “patriotism” means to you?

HRMC: The Fourth of July in 2020 follows the Covid-19 global pandemic, it follows the Black Lives Matter Civil Rights era in the United States, it follows the Supreme Court Expansion of Transgender Rights, it follows the toppling of countless statues and monuments across the country. Patriotism is discomfort, patriotism is speaking truth to power, patriotism is community.

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually”

— James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Hector René Membreño-Canales was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras (1988) and grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He's served more than a decade as a US Army Photographer with international posts including Iraq, El Salvador, Poland, and more. He continues to work as an educator, photographer, and visual artist. After serving in Iraq, Hector used the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill to study Photography at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) and earned his MFA from the Dept. of Art & Art History at Hunter College, The City University of New York.

Membreño-Canales’ work explores official histories, American patriotism, and the Military-Industrial Complex. His photographs have been exhibited at Osnova Gallery Moscow (2016), Aperture Foundation (2017), The Delaware Contemporary Museum of Art (2017), Field Projects (2018), and the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (2019). His work has been featured and reviewed by The New York Times, The New Republic, The Columbia Journalism Review, NPR, CNN, and L’Oeil de la Photographie.

Membreño-Canales teaches Visual Studies and Photography in the Art Department at Phillips Academy, Andover.

On Patriotic Consumption

AN INTERVIEW WITH HECTOR RENÉ MEMBREÑO-CANALES